This week, VISIT PHILADELPHIA® announced the official launch of the newly redesigned visitphilly.com, Greater Philadelphia’s official visitor website.
One of VISIT PHILADELPHIA’s key assets, visitphilly.com is charged with inspiring people to visit Philadelphia, motivating them to stay longer and encouraging its more than 1 million monthly users to do more in Philadelphia And The Countryside®. Building on the strengths of visitphilly.com, the redesigned website aims to better meet and exceed travelers’ high digital expectations in 2018.
Why Now:
VISIT PHILADELPHIA’s website is one of the most successful and highly used destination websites in the country, with more than 100 million web visits since 2010.
“We know from research that visits to our websites convert into real-life Philadelphia experiences,” said Meryl Levitz, president and CEO of VISIT PHILADELPHIA. “The changes to visitphilly.com make it easier than ever for visitors to find more reasons to visit and more things to do.”
“People are using destinations websites differently than they used to, so our goal with this redesign was to build a future-facing website that delivers a compelling, inspiring and uncomplicated user experience,” added James Zale, vice president of digital strategy for VISIT PHILADELPHIA. “On the new site, we’re deploying evolved digital strategies for reaching visitors and we’re better equipped to efficiently adapt to changes in the future.”
What’s New:
A compelling, inspiring design and a straightforward user experience are just two key enhancements to the new visitphilly.com. Here’s a look at these features and others on the site:
- Cinematic Design and Visuals: The new visitphilly.com design features large, vibrant images on every page to show off the destination and instantly draw visitors in. The heavily visual design is responsive, so its effectiveness translates across screen sizes: computers, tablets and smartphones, which make up more than 50 percent of all site traffic.
- Refined Content Strategy: The refined visitphilly.com content strategy places emphasis on things-to-do- and reasons-to-visit-focused content. Users will see more curated articles—such as “Top Things to Do in Philadelphia in April”—a response to how more website visitors are consuming content.
- Simplified Navigation: Delivering an uncomplicated user-experience is critical as visitors increasingly use mobile devices to explore destinations. The website’s new, simplified navigation surfaces the most popular content sections for easy browsing and discovery.
- More Blog Integration: The site also introduces more integration with uwishunu.com, VISIT PHILADELPHIA’s insider blog, by surfacing uwishunu.com posts prominently on visitphilly.com and making navigation between the two sites easier.
- Reimagined Online Media Center: At visitphilly.com/mediacenter, journalists, bloggers and other media professionals can find fact-filled press releases and ready-to-publish photography and B-roll. These online resources are now more visual and easier to search.
The Team & The Strategy:
To execute the redesign, VISIT PHILADELPHIA’s digital team worked directly with leading design agency Code and Theory’s San Francisco team on site strategy, design and development. The agency has developed websites for Visit California, San Francisco Travel and Brand USA, as well as publishing giants Bloomberg and NBC.
“Translating Philadelphia’s energy to a new digital look meant capturing its diverse culture, history and lively dining and nightlife scene,” Michael Martin, managing partner at Code and Theory San Francisco, said. “Together with VISIT PHILADELPHIA, we built a creative strategy around the traveler’s mindset and evolved that strategy through a wealth of data. The end result is snackable content pieces, insider things-to-do and cinematic images that give website visitors a real sense of place.”
In addition, the new site is optimized for search and social media so that more potential visitors can find what they’re looking for. Visit Philly’s presence on its 14 industry-leading social media channels is essential to the digital reach of the destination marketing organization (DMO).
What’s Next?:
This year, VISIT PHILADELPHIA is collaborating with Miles Partnership on a new Google Destination Content Initiative that aims to increase and enhance Philadelphia’s presence in Google search and across all Google Travel applications, including Maps and Guides.
The goal: to understand what Philly’s presence looks like on Google and improve the quality and quantity of information that prospective visitors can find about Philadelphia while planning their trips online.
The initiative includes an educational webinar and in-person workshop to help Philadelphia’s hotels, restaurants and attractions better manage their presence in Google and better showcase Philadelphia as a top U.S. destination for leisure visitation.
VISIT PHILADELPHIA® is our name and our mission. As the region’s official tourism marketing agency, we build Greater Philadelphia’s image, drive visitation and boost the economy.
On Greater Philadelphia’s official visitor website and blog, visitphilly.com and uwishunu.com, visitors can explore things to do, upcoming events, themed itineraries and hotel packages. Compelling photography and videos, interactive maps and detailed visitor information make the sites effective trip-planning tools. Along with Visit Philly social media channels, the online platforms communicate directly with consumers. Travelers can also call and stop into the Independence Visitor Center for additional information and tickets.
