One of Twelve Horses latest launches is the newly designed and developed Reno-Tahoe, America’s Adventure Place website located at visitrenotahoe.com. The Reno-Sparks Convention & Visitors Authority (RSCVA) looked to us to effectively communicate the excitement and value of the destination, as well as give them the necessary web tools to feature and promote the region going forward. Take a gander and let us know what you think of the look and feel.

Branding & Strategy

Before even beginning to architect the site or design comps we held several branding sessions to really uncover what the America’s Adventure place brand is and what the organization wants to project. In other words, what really differentiates the Reno-Tahoe destination from another location, and why would visitors want to go there? We identified the items of most importance, and the images and structure of the site reflect this.

Stakeholders also provided valuable input and feedback, which dictated certain elements of the site such as the Play-Stay-Dining-Events box directly below the main flash promo area.

You should also notice the emphasis on action, outdoor adventure, weather, which is prominent because of the large number of beautiful sunny days, and water because, unlike Vegas, Reno has a river that runs through it and is in close proximity to mountain snow and Lake Tahoe.

In general the homepage is designed to incorporate images, videos and feeds (such as the blog) to bring dynamic content to the forefront so it is never static. What’s new, what’s happening?  - there is always something exciting going on.

Website Design & Development

Building out this site required careful consideration to the organization of content (there were 6500 pages on the old site and currently 1500 on the new). Equally important was addressing the needs of marketing, convention and tourism sales, public relations, as well as the stakeholders that have a vested interest in the organization’s ability to promote convention and tourism business for Washoe County.

If you look at many other convention and visitor bureaus (CVBs) there is often a habit of creating specific portals for web visitors to enter the site. This is the way they deal with the challenging issue of organizing large amounts of content. For example:

The problem with this is it impacts the search engine optimization of the website as it relates to the ranking of the homepage, and one also runs the risk of not exposing say, a meeting planner to the information you would qualify for visitors/guests. We really tried hard to clearly present all of the information directly from the homepage.

Speaking of SEO and usability, before we launched the website the entire old site was mapped in order to maintain rankings while the search engines indexed the new site. This way, instead of receiving a 404 each page was referred to the proper page on the new website.

Web Development on the Backend

The RSCVA makes use of our Content Management System or CMS to edit and change all aspects of the website. It includes some cool custom applications such as:

• Stakeholder Application
• Individual stakeholders such as local hotels and casinos can edit their specific pages via their own login. They can change content, upload media and photos, and manipulate RSS feeds. These feeds are then displayed on the main calendar and events pages.
• Newsletter Application
• Instead of having to login in to a separate platform to design and deliver their email marketing campaigns, they can do it all through the CMS. All actions directly integrate with MessageMaker, so they can follow up on delivery rates and other pertinent statistics.
• Press Release Application
• The press release application gives public relations has the ability to construct press releases in the WYSIWYG editor and upload them to the website. They can also set specific permissions and date of release.
• Form Generator
• The form generator gives non-technical staff or webmasters the ability to build out promotions or giveaways to collect valuable customer information. The forms integrate with MessageMaker, which allows them to export lists to CSV or segment customers based on the specific promotions or items of interest.
• Search Engine Optimization Application
• The SEO application gives the RSCVA the ability to manage redirects, add analytics code, change meta data and much more.

Also included in the CMS are other useful items such as Workflow and Permissions. This gives staff the ability to send updates for approval and share the workload in order to keep content fresh and current. This extends across the board to all departments including:

• Finance
• Convention Sales
• Public Relations
• Tourism

Data Replication Engine

Behind it all is Twelve Horses’ Data Replication Engine (DRE). The RSCVA uses the DRE to take contacts from their website and push them into MessageMaker. It keeps the database current, and automatically manages action like, before email newsletter deliveries it does a check for all unsubscribes to be sure they never send an email to someone that does not want to receive it.

There is much more to it, but hopefully this gives you a good idea of what went into the website. Certainly a great level of consideration and technology has been applied to the construction of this website.

tags: website design, web site development, search engine optimization, seo, data replication engine, content managment system, reno, tahoe, rscva, ” reno sparks convention & visitors authority”

This entry was posted by Robert Payne on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Client Announcements, Company News, Technology, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.