The folks at Visit Mendocino County contacted us to completely overhaul GoMendo.com web presence. After a long RFP process we won the bid. Simplified navigation, web-friendly administration and member listings, build-your-own itineraries and a whole host of other features were custom built to deliver a massive improvement in usability and marketing results...
Effectively marketing America's Greenest Wine Region online is no small feat. We quickly identified at the onset of the project that, with such a broad range of information to manage, representing the interests of a membership-based organization, our challenge was going to be how to build a site that was super easy to work with for both visitor and provider. And the information would have to come together in a collaborative way that illustrated the appeal of Mendocino as a great place to visit.
Having recently undergone a rebranding process, the Mendocino team was keen to share what differentiated the region from other California Wine and Coast destinations, enabling our designer to translate that into the design.
Content-wise, the site is split into county-wide and region-specific destinations, each with its own unique flavour. Mendocino County is home to a huge number of events and the site caters to searchers wanting to find and build an itinerary of information ranging from festivals to local harvest (food producers) to wineries. The county boasts literally hundreds of vineyards, wineries and wine tour locations, so it was clear we had to create a customized wine search function allowing users to quickly find the wine tour best suited to their interests.
Built on Drupal, we integrated enhanced listing functionality such as filters and parameter based searches, enabling Visit Mendocino site users to hone in more quickly on the type of accommodation, activities (which include some impressive bike trails), restaurant or destination information they desire.
In essence, this massive project was delivered exactly on time and on budget, with full endorsement of the Mendocino Tourism Board. The initial analytics indicate a massive (178%) improvement in pages viewed per visit and time on site (120%).