Destination website development

Looking to showcase the wonders of Wānaka, Lake Wānaka Tourism tasked our team with designing and developing a new destination website to represent the area and promote the surrounding region.

Lake Wānaka Tourism, the official Regional Tourism Organisation (RTO) for the Lake Wānaka region, is responsible for promoting Wānaka, developing tourism and managing the opportunities and impacts it brings to the place and its people. 

Like most RTOs, the organisation’s official destination website hosts expert advice, travel guides and destination information, helping travellers and tourists from across the globe discover the destination and inspire them to explore it first hand. The platform also serves as a digital hub, representing a range of local businesses and enabling people to plan, book and manage their trip to Wānaka directly through the website. 

With existing features bolted on over the years, the original platform was not meeting the Lake Wānaka Tourism team’s needs. Publica was brought on board to create a fit for purpose platform and breathe a new life into the official destination website for Wānaka.

Starting with a discovery workshop, we took a deep dive with the Lake Wānaka Tourism team to uncover their audiences, define the goals for the new site and set a clear direction for the future of the project. With a scope well-defined, we then moved onto the sitemap to outline exactly how each element would interact and began developing a design that keeps the organisation’s key traveller types top of mind. The ultimate aim was to create an online experience that reflects the diversity of the destination, helps people envision travel possibilities and convert visitors with user friendly and unique features at various touch points throughout their journey. 

The combination of a simple colour scheme, an easy to navigate mega menu and white space creates the simplistic design the team was after while giving site visitors a beautiful user interface and keeping them immersed in the brand and key messages Lake Wānaka Tourism is trying to communicate. To captivate people and encourage them to explore more, an aerial image of the stunning scenery fills the front page just above the fold and raw, authentic imagery of the region is embedded throughout the entire Wānaka website. Full page photos, parallax scrolling, UI animations, motion designs and clear call to actions were also added to improve the user flow, enhance attention and bring a memorable experience that inspires users to experience new places and pursuits within the region. 

To make the user experience as easy as possible, we included interactive maps and Agolia Search to help travellers narrow down their trip options and give easy access to specific attractions, events, accommodation and experiences. The site is also integrated with BookIt to ensure operators have a means to maintain their listings and manage their reservations with accuracy and ease. 

With custom WordPress development, the beauty of the website is extended from the front-facing design and built right into the backend. The CMS displays an intuitive dashboard, filled with powerful content editing and publishing tools, built in SEO features and custom templates to make it easy for the Lake Wānaka Tourism team to manage, edit and create content online. Tested for each device and browser type, the site is scalable and each well crafted web page is showing as it’s intended to no matter where or how a site visitor is searching. 

The Lake Wānaka Tourism team now has a well designed and fully functional website that provides both aspirational and educational information to travellers, encourages conversions and makes it seamless for people to coordinate all aspects of their trip online. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with their team.