Description
One in five U.S. online travelers avoids destinations because a Web site's content doesn't make them feel comfortable; 26 percent cite the same problem with hotel Web sites. (Source: Forrester, Brand-Building Online Content Matters For eBusiness And Channel Strategy In A Recession, October 8, 2008)
As the centerpiece of CTTC’s digital presence, the continued evolution of visitcalifornia.com (VCA) is critical to the goal of deepening engagement and increasing the comfort level with a potentially reluctant California visitor. A deeper, more entertaining engagement with the California visitor through both VCA and California content in general is critical to driving more qualified traffic to assessed businesses and encouraging the deep exploration of California content that should result in increased travel to the state. The site must also visually reinforce the key “abundance” message being promoted offline.
Site enhancements begun in 2008-2009 will continue in 2009-2010, focusing on the specific enhancements that will drive both consumer satisfaction with the VCA experience and provide tools for driving incremental revenue. The site must completely embody the California brand: entertaining, friendly, approachable, unique, diverse, and technologically and culturally sophisticated.
Our target, the California overnight “Brandcaster,” is digitally savvy and has increasingly high expectations of their digital “relationships,” including a high degree of personalization, ease of use and rich, engaging content. With these criteria firmly in mind in 2009-2010, we will make significant improvements toward building VCA into a more engaging, personal, usable and agile marketing platform.
New for 09-10
A number of specific Web enhancement programs have been identified to improve the existing VCA site, including but not limited to:
Travel Planning Tool
A new planning tool will be built to heighten the perception of CTTC as a trusted travel advisor, help potential travelers educate themselves, and better navigate the abundant choices California has to offer. The travel advisor will drive behavior across all stages of the travel lifecycle and allow people to research activities and destinations beyond the primary California gateways, create itineraries relevant to their interests, share their itineraries with friends, and relive their experiences through the ability to attach/upload stories or photos to their “evolving itineraries” during or post trip.
This program empowers users to make better travel decisions that translate into more fulfilling experiences, longer stays and increased likelihood for return visitation. The online travel planning tool would live on VCA or as a microsite on travel partner sites.
Web Site Planning
Continue to develop and optimize the multi-year plan to meet CTTC’s long-term goals of utilizing technology to drive incremental business to California while improving efficiency and depth of relationship with visitors. Mapping to the five-year Strategic Marketing Plan, this project would detail the steps necessary to keep VCA in line with the most up-to-date technology, as well as encouraging increased user adoption compared to its competitors and the industry.
VCA Homepage Tiles
In 2009-2010, we will continue adding content and functionality to the newly launched hero tile space, including the ability to serve dynamic content to support referring media or inbound traffic. We will serve specific tiles in response to how a user arrives at the site, refreshing the tiles quarterly throughout 2009-2010 to keep site content fresh and engaging.
Content Enhancements
In addition to content updates associated with the VCA Homepage Tiles, we will be making a number of incremental improvements throughout the year to ensure that users find what they need as a product of our media driving them to the Web site. One of the key content themes for 2009-2010 is relevance and leveraging our knowledge about specific site visitors to ensure they are met with personalized, pertinent content wherever possible. We will also be leveraging new, more robust rich media to increase user engagement. Updated content will help ensure a consistent, branded tone of voice while being optimized for organic search.
Site Functionality and User Experience
One of the most consistent pieces of user feedback is that site visitors are unable to find what they need on the site. Oftentimes the content is there, but buried too deeply, without a logical path driving to it. Concurrent with improving content overall, we will be making functional and design changes to improve content organization and site flow while ensuring prominent calls to action are in place. Site search functionality will also be improved so that search users can easily find what they’re looking for via simple keyword search on the Web site.
Travel Tools Section Redesign
The Travel Tools section on VCA will be redesigned to provide travelers with a more unified and comprehensive set of tools all in one place to help them plan their next trip to California. This will heighten the perception of CTTC as a trusted travel advisor and help travelers better navigate the abundant choices California has to offer. Travel Tools will drive behavior across all stages of the travel lifecycle and allow people to research activities and destinations beyond the primary California gateways; create itineraries relevant to their interests; access essential travel information (i.e. driving times between destinations) and learn when to come, how to get around and where to stay. Interactive maps will be an integral part of this redesign, which will allow users to easily find things to do and places to stay throughout the state’s 12 regions via a map interface. This program empowers users to make better travel decisions that translate into more fulfilling experiences, longer stays and increased likelihood for return visitation.
Deal Section Redesign
The Deal section on VCA will be redesigned to better fulfill the current deal mentality, be more visually appealing to travelers and provide exposure for industry deals (i.e. FunSpots) through specific deals programs. In addition, deals and packages from three Online Travel Agency networks (OTAs) will seamlessly be incorporated into the Deal section to provide more value to the traveler on VCA. The FunSpots deals will have a visual differentiation that provides extra value to paying partners and call these deals out with more prominence. To complement the Deal section redesign, deals will also be cross-promoted more aggressively and effectively throughout VCA.
Objectives/Metrics
During the first three months of the 2009-2010 fiscal year, we will develop benchmarking data to inform our future optimizations and Web site development strategy. Once benchmarks are in place, we will apply both qualitative and quantitative metrics to our evaluation of site improvements including:
Qualitative Measurement
To monitor sentiment regarding site improvements, we will leverage the TNS study and reach out to key industry partners and a sample set of users yearly to survey the following:
- user satisfaction
- partner/industry satisfaction
- competitive benchmarking
Quantitative Measurement
To be tracked through both Sapient’s proprietary web tracking tool, BridgeTrack, and Google Analytics and include:
- actions taken on site
- # of pages viewed
- time spent with site
- repeat vs. unique visits
- types of content consumed
BUDGET ITEMS
Foundational Programs: $845,000 |