Visit Noosa
A striking & chic digital experience for a world-class destination
Noosa is the golden child of the Sunshine Coast. It’s a haven of white-sand beaches and first-class culinary experiences. It’s a UNESCO-recognised biosphere of pristine rainforest and dramatic cliff faces. It’s one of Australia’s go-to destinations for relaxed and resplendent resorts.
But when Noosa spoke with us, they had everything except the tourism website that they deserved. And we were more than happy to help them upgrade.
We worked with the Visit Noosa team to build and deliver a bespoke, contemporary website on the Roam platform. What is Roam? Roam is a destination marketing platform that’s been designed specifically for Australia’s DMOs’ and tourism brands, and provides custom, flexible and powerful websites tailored to individual organisations.
In Noosa’s case, this meant a website that was responsive across all devices and easy-to-navigate for both users and the Visit Noosa staff. The new Visit Noosa experience includes interactive maps & itineraries , enhanced product listings; integrated bookability; native Instagram feeds; lightning fast search; and SEO optimisation for high search visibility.
Intuitive content architecture
The brief might have been simple: build a responsive new website for the Noosa region destination. But to achieve this, there were a lot of boxes that needed to be ticked.
Some of the major priorities included ensuring that the new Visit Noosa website integrated existing sub-sites into the main website using intuitive content architecture; implementing best UX design and function; simplifying the site structure so that the in-house Noosa team could work autonomously; and future-proofing with the ability to add new features and technology without major costs or need to upgrade the entire system. Roam is adept at providing destination marketers with a comprehensive set of features delivering best-in-class DMO websites.
Besides this, the act of generating and enabling website bookings and enquiries was a key focus. We integrated an itinerary-building platform that included personalised directions, to enhance the user experience and easily connect customers with products, experiences and destination information.
One of the powerful features of Roam is the product directory and search experience, providing a lightning fast way to search all content across the site with a few keystrokes. In addition, we implemented a custom booking widget for TN which gives users the ability to search and book accommodation directly on the site.
Lastly, we had to find a new digital partner that was proactive, results-oriented and understood destination marketing foundations to provide TN with a long-term website and digital solutions for new products in the future.
From clunky to seamless
The previous Visit Noosa website was overwhelmed by different content pieces, making it difficult to navigate and access relevant information. Our first priority was developing an intuitive and easy-to-follow information architecture that structured the website content.
Roam provides a flexible set of page components that were customised to match Noosa’s look & feel; these can then be assembled in different ways across the site to create a rich narrative experience. Together with the TN team we shaped the experience to be a perfect blend of editorial and product driven content.
We made sure the navigation moved from clunky to seamless; effectively integrated tourism databases and booking and event functions; added predictive search functionality; and improved overall site load time.
Design-wise, we used clean lines and white/negative space to stagger components, giving the site breathing room and a more bespoke look and feel. This was not only aesthetically beautiful, but it helped users navigate the site and find content.
Another requirement was helping users plan their ultimate Noosa trip. We supported this by adding in beautiful, custom mapping features that allows users to discover and explore Noosa’s villages and experiences.
Inspiring site architecture
Improved user experience was everything for this project. The site needed to be exceptionally mobile friendly – easy for users to plan trips, book accommodation, view and book events, and get up-to-date Noosa news on the go.
We kicked things off by building a strategic vision for the website, taking into consideration all the ways Tourism Noosa would be using it. This included in-depth analysis of their current challenges and future goals. This strategy session then led to creating a unique value proposition map for user experience and fully mapping out the customer journey – from key personas to messaging and content creation.
We held an IA workshop at the beginning of the project that informed all decision-making around site architecture, helping us ascertain the content Visit Noosa wanted to have on site and predicting the content users would want to see. We needed the site architecture to encourage users to keep exploring the region via the site’s inspiring editorial content. We also built a powerful search function, so that users can easily find that they’re looking for.
Aesthetically, we wanted to capture a beachy and chic vibe that personifies the Noosa experience and the essence of the region. The sand, turquoise and coral palette is based on the natural colours of the environment and set the backdrop for the stunning imagery and vistas of Noosa’s natural beauty.
The first step in getting Noosa onto the Roam platform was understanding all existing website analytics and other data relevant to user behaviours. This gave us a deeper understanding of user needs and how we could support the user journey with user-focused design, easily navigable site architecture and a call-to-action placement strategy.
Luckily by default Roam provides excellent on-page technical SEO, as poor SEO performance of the websites previous iteration was a serious concern. In addition we redirected the most important pages from the old website to ensure relevant link authority was captured.
Roam also comes with Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Google Tag Manager baked in, all of which allows for better digital marketing reporting and ultimately improved content opportunities.