We Brought the World West

The previous incarnation of Visit California’s Industry site was filled to the brim with content. We kept receiving feedback about info being too hard to find and content not relevant enough. Easy navigation and a fresh, clean design were top priorities. But so was figuring out the audience—of which there were several. We needed to determine who they were, what their challenges were and how we could better support them overall.

THE APPROACH

As a customer experience agency, we think relentlessly about our clients and the people they serve. So, we started off by using Personas to take care of the audience piece. Smart insights came from several sources, like targeted surveys, secondary research and stakeholder interviews. These insights helped ensure relevancy and value in every page.

We updated imagery, video and used strong directive copy to help our audiences find exactly what they were looking for. On a creative level, these assets highlighted California’s beauty in ways not previously explored. It was the crucial storytelling component missing all along, framed perfectly among sun-laden scenes.

Refined functionality also helped users do things like download research articles or save them to their account for later viewing. In fact, this was directly informed by one of our Personas for the Insight Seeker—whose primary responsibilities include research analysis and presentation. Data was smartly visualized through maps, graphs, quotes plus a lot more. 

But how could we make content authorship for Visit California as simple as possible years down the line? Content Framework documents would guide their team through writing, providing guidance on page objectives, character count and more. On the CMS front, Sitecore® was chosen for its uncomplicated interface and ability to scale with the growing tourism industry.