Reinventing the Wellington destination website.

Not just a directory.

Earlier iterations of WellingtonNZ.com had attempted to provide a complete directory of everything that Wellington had to offer – resulting in thousands of pages across multiple sections. Keeping this information updated was often challenging – and user research showed that it was sometimes not as helpful to visitors as intended. 

Insights highlighted that visitors had clear motivations, but were often confronted with too many options on directory sites – making it more challenging to narrow choices, plan and take action. 

A central challenge was how to personalise the experience – without requiring visitors to jump through lots of complicated interaction hoops like logging in. It was also essential to not only showcase the attractions of the city to visitors – but also locals and businesses.

It required rethinking from the ground up how the information on the site would be organised, linked and presented.

Discovering a new narrative.

The scale of the site, its diverse content, and the variety of audiences made it essential to consider every decision from multiple angles. The solution was fundamentally a new way of organising and curating the information on the site. This enabled 'stories' to be linked in ways that made discovery natural – and encouraged people to explore further

New interaction features were designed to enable a more natural discovery of related experiences, activities and events. To deliver an improved experience, every element of the site was considered and optimised. New features such as short content previews were introduced and integrated seamlessly into the site experience. 

Close collaboration was vital.

The project required close collaboration between DNA and the client – across designers, developers and content teams. The outcome is a site that vastly improves the visitor experience in every possible way.

The amount of content on the site has reduced significantly allowing the content team to focus on quality – showing off the best that Wellington has to offer. Video storytelling has been introduced to provide a richer experience.

The site can now adapt to the preferences of visitors who are interested in art, music, food, games or events and makes sure they see content that is relevant to them. The site now showcases Wellington's signature experiences in a range of ways – that suit the user's preferences.

Structuring and classifying the content.

A reinvented global taxonomy broke down the content silos that existed on the previous site. It enabled automated page creation and filtering of the content on landing pages and within search.

A site for everyone.

The work on the site was focussed on making sure that it could help those interested in visiting Wellington to enjoy the region to its fullest. It was also important to help locals make the most of the place they call home, or help a business, for example, looking for a conference venue to know that their attendees would love their time in Wellington.

Launched.

We're enormously proud to see the launch of the new WellingtonNZ.com – the result of many months of hard work from our team and WellingtonNZ.

Huge thanks to the WellingtonNZ crew for being such amazing people to work with.

While our team has focussed on strategy, design and development – the WellingtonNZ team have made massive improvements to the content, the quality of the imagery and the introduction of video that truly brings the city to life.

We're excited for the potential of what we've built together. We're looking forward to seeing it deliver a rewarding experience to every visitor – getting them to experience the best that Wellington has to offer.

Working with WellingtonNZ.com

The upgrade to WellingtonNZ.com is part of an ongoing programme to help visitors, businesses, students and Wellingtonians get the most of one of the most unique little cities in the world.