Elkhart Lake

Tourism Website Redesign.

Project Brief.

Elkhart Lake is a lakeside resort village in central Wisconsin. The Elkhart Lake website gives residents, visitors and event planners a central hub to learn and explore all the area has to offer. Ascedia led the strategy, creative and development for a website redesign and digital marketing & advertising.

In addition to a new visual platform, Elkhart Lake had four primary goals for their website redesign: Increase traffic to the Official Visitors Guide, Increase traffic and activity on the Weddings page, Maintain newsletter subscription rate, and improve Events page user experience.

Elkhart mobile mockup

Client Details.

Services Provided.

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

Project Solution.

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.
 

Navigation

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.


 
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.

Re-platforming in WordPress in Pantheon's development and hosting environment brought major improvements in website security, stability, and speed.
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.
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.  

In a year-over-year comparison, Elkhart Lake's new website earned quite a boost in results:  

0 %

Increase in traffic

0 %

Increase in wedding traffic

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Increase in visitor guide views

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Increase in form submissions