Case Studies

Objective

The Redding Tourism Marketing Group needed a new website to go along with their new brand, Choose Redding.

Process Breakdown

The Redding Tourism Marketing Group needed a website that worked on both desktop and mobile for their new brand that promoted lodging and tourism opportunities in the Redding area.

The first step in my research was to take a deep dive into the Google Analytics of the website for the Redding Tourism Marketing Group’s old brand. I wanted to see what design and content elements had resonated with their target audience in the past, and what parts of the site hadn’t performed as well, and find a way to carry through those old strengths, while eliminating the weaknesses. I also wanted to get a feel for what SEO terms would work best for page names and headlines. The second part of my research was looking at other tourism websites and see what worked for other destinations.

What I found in the analytics told me that while user retention on the old site was great, the site didn’t as well at funneling visitors to key CTA’s - hotel booking, visitor guide requests, and newsletter sign ups. With the redesign, I wanted to keep the basic structure of the old site, since the Google Analytics showed that it worked well to keep people engaged. However, I wanted to make CTA’s such as the booking widget, visitor guide request, and newsletter sign up much more prominent, and easy to get to no matter what page of the site you were on. I also wanted to update the look and feel of the site to be more modern, and create a design that felt consistent across both desktop and mobile. The final site featured buttons to the CTA’s prominently in the header of each page, rather then buried in navigation like on the old site. It also used a design with a number of modular “cards” that allowed for versatility in presentation, yet offered consistency throughout desktop, mobile, and different page designs.

Objective

Redesign Visit Redding’s visitor guide brochure to be in line with a recent brand refresh and showcase the wide variety of tourism opportunities in Redding, CA.

Process Breakdown

My first step in redesigning the guide was to look over Redding’s past visitors guides - I wanted to see what directions they had taken this piece in the past, and which ones they felt worked best for them. I also questioned Visit Redding staff as to what they most wanted the visitor guide to accomplish. Secondly, since one of the main uses of their guide was to place it in brochure racks, I asked the company in charge of distributing those brochures to send me some examples of which brochures performed well on the racks. I then went through those brochures to see what designs were resonating with Redding’s target audience.

After my research, I came to a couple of conclusions. First, while the existing guide had a lot of great information on what there was to do in the area, it was low on photography that showed off the area’s natural beauty - something that other successful visitors guides used heavily. Second, while the old guide had information on local attractions, it was fairly simple and lacked copy that would describe what local attractions entailed to people unfamiliar with the area.

My goal with the redesign, in addition to updating the design of the piece to be in line with the brand and have a cohesive look with other Redding CVB marketing efforts, was the incorporate more descriptive language describing what visitors could expect in the area, and to add more photography in order to show them the area’s beauty and what they could experience there. The final piece switched to a new fold-out format that allowed for more pictures while still fitting into a standard brochure rack. Each attraction featured a larger picture, as well as a paragraph of information so that people unfamiliar with the area could get a feel for what Redding had to offer.