Elkhart Lake

Tourism Website Redesign.

Project Brief.

Elkhart Lake is a lakeside resort village in central Wisconsin and home to Road America, one of North America's premier motorsports venues. The village's CVB relies on its website as the primary hub for visitors, residents, and event planners exploring everything the area has to offer.

Partnership Overview

Ascedia led the strategy, UX, design, and development for a full website redesign to support ongoing development, maintenance, digital marketing, and advertising. The goal was clear: transform the website into a high-performing platform that drives engagement, supports key initiatives, and converts visitors into action.

Elkhart mobile mockup

Client Details.

Services Provided.

  • Strategic Planning
  • Experience Design
  • Application Development
  • Digital Marketing

Project Solution.

Challenge

Elkhart Lake's existing site was underperforming against four specific goals:

  • The Visitor Guide, a major annual investment, lacked visibility and was often missed by users
  • The Weddings page generated little to no organic traffic and lacked flexibility for content, layout, or form submissions, forcing reliance on third-party landing pages
  • Newsletter subscriptions, a primary engagement channel, needed to be maintained and expanded
  • The Events section failed to communicate the volume and variety of activities, leading users to call for information they could not find online  

Solutions Delivered

Research and user testing guided the redesign. Key findings showed users preferred more intuitive navigation, struggled to locate the Visitor Guide, and found the Weddings page uninspiring and difficult to use.

A new responsive website design and template structure empowered the marketing team to manage content while maintaining a highly visual website experience. Events now benefit from a re-thought approach with filtering and stronger display logic.

Visuals

Research showed that users missed the Visitor Guide because it blended in with other design elements. In addition, users were frustrated by the Weddings page because of its lack of inspiration and relevant photography.

Streamlined navigation and site structure

One of the main pain points that surfaced in research was website structure and navigation. User tests showed that navigational terms had opportunity for improvement. Visitors responded better to shorter, more casual names.

Enhanced Visitor Guide visibility

  • Featured prominently in the homepage header and footer
  • Added persistent visibility across interior pages

Reimagined Weddings experience

  • Built a visually driven, content-rich section
  • Organized content into clear categories — Ceremonies, Venues, Florists Introduced clear calls-to-action to support engagement and conversion
Key pages lacked engaging content and the website platform wasn’t flexible for new layouts or form submission features. This forced Elkhart Lake to build landing pages on third-party sites to drive traffic.

Modern WordPress foundation

  • Implemented a custom Gutenberg block system for flexible, consistent content creation
  • Designed and developed with ADA/WCAG accessibility and technical SEO best practices built in from the start
  • Migrated hosting to Pantheon, improving performance, security, and development workflows

Editor empowerment & training

  • Trained CVB staff to confidently manage and update content
  • Eliminated reliance on third-party landing pages and developer intervention for routine updates

Improved newsletter engagement

  • Integrated sign-up opportunities across the homepage and key content pages
A new content strategy was implemented for the Weddings section; broken down visually into categories, such as Ceremonies, Venues and Florists, each including a “Learn More” button for more engaging content.  

Events pages were not representative of the variety of events happening at one time in the Elkhart Lake area. Users often called the office for event information they couldn’t find on the website.

Restructured Events experience

  • Added Featured Events to highlight key activities
  • Implemented a filterable calendar by date and category

Elkhart Lake now operates on a flexible, high-performance platform that supports ongoing content growth and campaign execution.

The internal team can confidently manage and expand the site using the Gutenberg block system, reducing long-term costs and increasing speed to market for new content.

With Pantheon hosting, built-in accessibility standards, and a strong SEO foundation, the site continues to perform as a reliable, scalable marketing tool — supporting visitor engagement, event promotion, and long-term growth.

Elkhart Lake homepage
Elkhart Lake plan your trip page
Elkhart Lake wedding page

Project Outcomes.

Results indicate an improved user experience that engages visitors to explore deeper into the site. Elkhart Lake’s team now has a flexible platform to refine content strategy and drive positive results.  

Within one year of launch, the redesigned site delivered strong gains across all key goals:

Improved engagement metrics

  • Pages per session increased by
  • 14% Average session duration increased
  • Bounce rate decreased by 6.3%

Events usability improvements

  • Post-launch testing confirmed faster access to event information
  • Reduced reliance on phone inquiries

0 %

Increase in overall site traffic

0 %

Increase in wedding traffic

0 %

Increase in visitor guide views

0 %

Increase in form submissions