Supercharging discovery for Visit Bolton
After achieving City of Culture Status, Bolton is experiencing a resurgence of interest in the region.
With the launch of the new Visitor Economy Strategy – a three-year initiative designed to showcase Bolton as a prime destination for families, visitors, and students, and as a thriving environment for work and investment, the Visit Bolton website has some heavy lifting to do when it comes to driving the visitor economy.
The old Visit Bolton website looked dated. Its complicated user journey made it difficult for businesses to keep profiles up-to-date and visitors to find key information on things to do in the area.
The Visit Bolton team wanted a brand new website and brand that reflected the vibrancy of the town, with streamlined functionality for everyone using the platform.
Here’s how we create a dynamic, user-friendly website that showcases Bolton’s unique attractions, supports local organisations, and enhances the visitor experience for residents and tourists…
Listening to the voices of Bolton-based businesses
The Visit Bolton team had a specific vision for the development of their new website.
But to create a platform that businesses wanted to use, we needed to understand why engagement had dwindled over the years.
We connected with local businesses and took time to understand how we could improve the user journey and create a dynamic portal that would become an important marketing channel for promoting their business and events.
Key points to focus on included improved filter functionality to improve navigation and discovery, and a human-led support system.
Turning insights into actions
As well as creating a brand new look and feel to the website, our core aims were to define the user journey and streamline the information hierarchy to create an intuitive platform that was easy to use.
By utilising invaluable insights from local businesses and defining user intent based on core audience groups, we were able to carefully construct a network of intelligently curated journeys to aid discovery and keep visitors engaged.
Transforming website engagement with bespoke digital solutions
The new website has a host of incredible new features, including access to event information, including entertainment, leisure, hospitality, local attractions and dining.
To make this journey as seamless as possible, we designed an intelligent sitemap structure that was based on user intent and need states.
Our tech team built a bespoke portal system that made it much easier for organisations, businesses, and event providers to upload and manage their listings. This allowed us to build a system that focuses on intuitive categorisation to improve search and aid discovery.
We also wanted to make it as easy as possible for visitors to plan their trips, so we created an itinerary option that allows users to save events, attractions and listings. People can even share itineraries on social media, helping to maximise brand reach online!
Creating strong partnerships
From our focus groups, we identified a core request from Bolton-based businesses: human-led support rather than a fully automated response system.
Bolton Council is committed to building relationships with local businesses. So, as part of our bespoke portal system, we also created a dynamic communications feature that enables the team to engage with users, review and approve listings and send timely reminders to help those using the platform to keep listings up-to-date and relevant for audiences.
We also created a downloadable step-by-step guide to make adding, managing and removing listings as easy as possible, and integrated an intelligent live chat system into the portal to give users more support throughout the listing process.
Intelligent marketing with API made bespoke for Bolton Council
To facilitate cross-channel promotion for businesses and reduce the time needed to add events to several platforms, we created a bespoke Application Programming Interface (API) for Bolton Council. The API is a safe and secure piece of software that manages both the submission and retrieval of business and event listings. Submissions are subject to duplicate checking and an approval process, with automatic user account creation and geocoding.
The system also integrates with the sister site Albert Halls through a separate secure API so that events only need to be uploaded once to appear on both websites.
Future-proofing organic discovery
The Visit Bolton team has a robust strategy in place to enhance website visibility through ongoing SEO enhancement. We set the team up for success by…
➔ Using an SEO-friendly architecture and structured data to help search engines and users navigate your site efficiently
➔ Utilising pagination to organise content into manageable sections for better indexing
➔ Ensuring the site is mobile-friendly for Google's mobile-first indexing and improved user experience
➔ Implementing schema markup functionality for rich snippets to enhance search result visibility
➔ Optimising for Core Web Vitals, such as site speed, interactivity, and stability
Building a connected community and a robust visitor economy
Bolton has a rich history, and for the new brand, we took inspiration from its foundations in the cotton trade to create visual threads that represent journeys and pathways linking people and places.
This theme runs throughout the website's design, resulting in an intuitive, easy-to-use platform that makes it easier than ever for people to find fun things to do in Bolton.
This new website will go a long way in helping the Council to improve the Visitor Economy strategy by:
➔ Providing a platform for organisations to showcase their offerings
➔ Increasing visitor engagement and time spent on the website
➔ Improving the discoverability of local events, attractions, and organisations
➔ Supporting the local economy by promoting Bolton's hospitality, cultural venues, and public spaces
➔ Strengthening Bolton's brand identity and place narrative
➔ Attracting potential investors and developers to the area
Our tried and tested approach ensures that our clients connect with the right audience.
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