Case Study: The StateView Responsive Hotel Website Design
Situation & Objective
We were tasked with crafting a new responsive website for the StateView Hotel, a luxury Raleigh, NC property, that significantly outperformed its predecessor in visibility, traffic, direct bookings, and revenue. Located on the North Carolina State University Centennial Campus, StateView Hotel’s new website aimed to showcase the Marriott Autograph Collection Hotels’ unmatched amenities, upscale rooms and suites, and optimal location through an improved user experience and content creation.
We strive to maximize the conversion potential of visitors to the StateView Hotel vanity site through an improved user experience, as well as highlighting the hotel’s modern design and on-site amenities.
In addition to improving the usability of the site in an effort to convert site visitors, we sought to generate new site visitors by increasing search visibility through targeted content creation.
Primary KPIs were website traffic, conversion rate, total bookings, and revenue increases.
Target Audience
With its historic oak-lined streets, popular area universities and diverse mix of things to do, it’s no wonder the capital city of Raleigh, NC attracts 17 million visitors annually.
Our digital marketing efforts on the StateView Hotel website were aimed at leisure travelers (specifically couples), corporate travelers, group travel, weddings, and N.C. State University visitors.
Research & Planning
Prior to beginning services, we analyzed the visitor path of the previous StateView Hotel website to determine where it was failing. With more than 50% of site visitors entering on a mobile device, designing and developing for mobile was one of our largest opportunities. This 100% responsive website redesign would feature large calls to action, updated photography, virtual tours, and planning tools.
We also completed extensive keyword research and content planning with the dual purpose of determining what would be most useful to consumers as well as increasing rankings for a variety of keywords, in turn generating additional site traffic via natural search.
Message & Implementation
The key messages intended for this project were centered around booking direct. Other messages that helped us reach our goals were specific to targeted keywords within supporting content efforts.
Items that set the redesigned website apart from the competition include 100% responsive code, comprehensive structured data markup, extensive performance optimization and tuning as well as efficient use of JavaScript and CSS.
In addition, the all-new StateView Hotel website features high-quality alluring photography and unique, 360-degree 3D virtual tours that allow the visitor to place themselves in hundreds of positions throughout the property including modern rooms and suites, upscale, on-site amenities.
Results
During the first six months post-launch for the same period year-over-year (January-June) we achieved increases across-the-board. We also increased group, retreat, and wedding request for proposal submissions, as well as, email sign-ups.
