Visittheoregoncoast.comis a top resource for visitors to research, plan, and find inspiration on the the Oregon Coast. With this investment, OCVA worked with Cardwell Creative, a professional website design and development agency, to build a website that showcases the places and experiences of the Oregon Coast.
The website is used to support consumer-facing marketing efforts, and Oregon Coast tourism industry professionals by highlighting the diversity of places and experiences available on the Oregon Coast.
The first phase was to transfer and redesign the preexisting content. The second phase was integrating all coastal points of interest with the Oregon Tourism Information System (OTIS). The third phase was adding new high-priority content, digitizing valuable brochures such as our food trails, kayak maps, fat biking, and public art assets.
Success for the Oregon Coast, and its stakeholders, is increased awareness of the assets and complexities of their region—fostering a more sustainable tourism industry. 60% of Oregon Coast stakeholders indicated it was a high or very-high priority to enhance the previous website. In addition, stakeholders said marketing and promotion was the most important priority for 2019-21.
Goals
OCVA wanted to develop a website that was informative, inspiring and represented the beauty of the Oregon Coast and its businesses, with the intended impact of visitor education, increased consumer awareness, regional representation and responsible visitation. Additionally, the RDMO wanted an easy-to-use industry website that would align reports, updates, industry events and communications to better align the coastal tourism industry.
Results
The team was excited with the end result: more than 3,500 unique pages thoughtfully designed and published, integrated OTIS content, original content for every city, direct booking for lodging, advertising opportunities for local businesses. This is increasing awareness, aligning industry resources and access to inspiring information for locals and visitors alike. The new website has had a 6.14% increase in average session durations and 4.49% decrease in the bounce rate, indicating a positive user experience and increased time learning about the Oregon Coast. (July 2019 compared to July 2021)
The most challenging part of this project was taking the amount of information needed to equitably represent the entire Oregon Coast and design it in a way that was clean, digestible, and inspiring for browsers.
