Project Overview
Melbourne Now is a visitability website owned by tourism organisation Destination Melbourne. The website’s purpose is to encourage people to come to Melbourne, stay longer and spend more. Their existing site had been on a now-defunct platform VIISIT. We were engaged in taking over the management of their website and migrate it onto the Roam platform.
Roam is a destination marketing platform designed for Australia’s tourism organisations. It’s a powerful and flexible website builder packed with the tools that crafty marketers need to promote their destinations. Roam is a software as a service (SAAS) platform with a small upfront cost and annual subscription fee. Tourism websites built on Roam get a cost-effective website that evolves with the market.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Mack Nevill (Creative Director)
Fiona Doherty (Project Manager)
Ember Mitchell (Digital Strategy)
Adrian Sala (Designer)
Romain Palmas (Developer)
Matt Cordell (Developer)
Project Brief
Melbourne Now faced an unexpected challenge - the business in charge of managing and hosting their website collapsed. They needed a new technology partner and a whole lot of assurance that we could deliver on promises.
Their existing site had only been live for a few months, but with the opportunity for a do-over, we took a fresh look at audience insights and business objectives to ensure their Roam site would delight audiences and impact business metrics.
The Melbourne Now site needs to attract visitors and encourage them to spend more time and money in the city. For the website to do this effectively, it had to:
1. Generate leads and expand the email database
2. Encourage people to take action
3. Increase awareness of places and activities
4. Help them move away from print-based marketing
5. Generate revenue - via commission based click-outs to accommodation and event partners
Project Need
To create a digital experience that inspires and converts visitors.
One of the first considerations for the Melbourne Now site was the brand look and feel. They wanted to inject more colour into the site, having already tired of their existing, limited palette.
Together, we settled on purple as the lead colour supported by a flexible palette that works across the site in both text and content blocks. Bold colours enliven the website and offer a contrasting treatment to beautiful photographic images.
Melbourne Now distributes monthly email campaigns as part of their marketing strategy. The new website would need to encourage newsletter sign-ups.
Melbourne Now needed a long term balance between content from tourism operators and their original articles. At the time of build there was very little brand content - a challenge we would have to overcome.
User Experience
Mobile technology influences every stage of the travel customer journey. The website would need to offer a great experience across devices to capture a mobile-savvy market.
UX design elements tap into micro-moments along the customer journey. Research taught us that the target audience, regional Victorians, typically don't know what they’re looking for when they arrive on the website. We made it possible for these explorers to browse in different ways:
1. Prominent search with filtering capabilities
2. Featured experiences to surface time-sensitive events
3. ‘What’s on now’ to capture those already in Melbourne
4. Featured deals to encourage impulse trips
5. Inspiration articles that use strong imagery and stories to bring experiences to life
Primary navigation is simple and allows users to discover relevant content within a click. By hovering over succinct headings, users can refine their experience with options like seasons, top picks and food & drink.
Information architecture and design are clean and feature clear click-throughs. Content guides users from the early 'dreaming' phase right through to in-the-moment 'experiencing' phase of the travel customer journey.
Integrations with the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW), Zomato and Instagram, solved the limited content problem. Melbourne Now can pull in content from tourism operators and shape it to look like their own within the Roam platform. Content integration saves the team time and gives users an exceptional digital experience.
Project Marketing
Alleviate reliance on print with a digital marketing plan.
On-site featured content and deals
Melbourne Now can inject conversion-focussed content in multiple areas on the homepage. 'What's on now' and accommodation deals inspire impulse travellers while the featured content captures those passionate about specific events like comedy or theatre experiences. Click-throughs take the user to engaging story-based content and clear call-to-actions (CTAs) that result in partner click-outs.
Email marketing
Monthly campaigns reach a growing database. Newsletter sign-ups are encouraged on the homepage with an always-on block. Melbourne Now can add it to other content pages to help capture leads and grow the database.
SEM
Integrated campaigns promote the Melbourne Now brand and partners. A mix of Facebook and Facebook remarketing, Instagram Ad Network, Google Ads Paid Search and Display Remarketing inspire, engage and convert regional Victorians.
We recently ran a series of campaigns called 'More Reasons' that encouraged regional Victorians to visit Melbourne and explore more of the metropolitan area. The campaign creative is updated seasonally to ensure relevance and create a sense of urgency around limited time offers.
The primary objective of each campaign is to incentivise users to click-out to partner sites. The most recent More Reasons campaign saw a 70% increase in click-outs to partner sites.
Project Privacy
Standard privacy procedure was followed under best practice on all contact forms and other areas of the website where personally identifiable data was collected. In addition, we ensure that no personal information is passed through Google Analytics (e.g. email addresses). Regular penetration testing is conducted to ensure the site and server are secure. The website, hosting and infrastructure pass this testing with no significant issues identified.
Digital - TravelTech
TravelTech helps us to get from A to B easier, quicker, cheaper, takes us to places far away while still sitting in our armchair, makes getting lost hard to do and informs, guides and assists. Take us on a journey with your TravelTech.
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