visit ventura
Website Redesign
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Situation
Visit Ventura’s website needed a redesign. The DMO was happy with its website’s content but the great storytelling got lost in the clunky, old site. The bones of the site were there, but VisitVenturaCA.com needed a dynamic, visually appealing design to encourage users to explore the site and make it easy for them to navigate and discover more about the destination.
Approach
Visit Ventura wanted to shift away from a traditional DMO website focused on listings and have their site centered around its editorial content. To inform our redesign, we analyzed lifestyle and fashion brand websites—bringing in key elements of those sites to bolster VisitVenturaCA.com visual appeal.
VisitVenturaCA.com was housed in WordPress, our recommended CMS, so we focused on transitioning the site to one of our custom DMO website WordPress themes. This new site layout highlighted Visit Ventura’s photography and creative assets—presenting their content on different modules and vibrant blocks. This minimized the amount of copy and made the site more approachable and encouraged users to explore.
The enhanced navigation was emphasized by updated site map and category hubs. We created new top-level pages that covered core travel intents. Additionally, to promote year-round travel, we folded seasonality into the top navigation bar, showing users the top activities during every season.
The new site maintains Visit Ventura’s brand identity while giving it a modern feel, exemplified by the site’s spinning, ambigram logo. Following the redesign of the site, we have shifted to developing new innovations into their site to increase its performance and enhance its ability to drive conversions. As part of our ongoing enhancements, we integrated natural language processing technology and adaptive a/b testing into the site—providing a personalized experience to users while optimizing the site’s layout.
Results
The new VisitVenturaCA.com was not only more visually appealing—it was more effective as helping Visit Ventura achieve its marketing goals.
