Overview.

Tourism Barrie

How does digital savvy route you to a major economic destination?

Tourism Barrie is a not-for-profit business association tasked with providing unbiased information on events, accommodations, attractions, dining, and shopping, for the city of Barrie, Ontario. The association’s website, socials, and digital marketing integration target potential and returning visitors to this four-season destination which relies on tourism for its economic prosperity. The association is also tasked with telling the stories of and driving traffic to a roster of members, including local businesses and event organizers. Funded by the City, Tourism Barrie is expected to be innovative, efficient, and impactful when building and maintaining an online presence for the region. The lean team at Tourism Barrie must leverage their resourcefulness and creativity while justifying the economic implications of their efforts and their success must be well-documented and linked to measurable results for the City.

SERVICES

Design

Strategy & Planning
User Interface Design

Technology

Sitefinity DX
Content Management
Accessibility

Content

Strategy & Planning
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Overview
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Gather.

Our longstanding partnership with Tourism Barrie allowed us to leverage existing knowledge and relationships to initiate a complete website rebuild.

Their existing site had become somewhat content-heavy but ranked highly in search. The goal was to maintain their impressive SEO rankings while boosting mobile impressions and providing an overall experience that was both bold and sleek. With an extensive roster of events, partners, and advertorial opportunities, plus the necessity for continuous content updates, Tourism Barrie sought a tailored solution that would harness the intuitive and intelligent capabilities of their Sitefinity DXP platform. Our solution would not only result in a complete redesign, but also an opportunity to achieve a more significant business and measurable economic impact for our client and their partners.

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Shape.

We proposed embarking on a bold new direction, and Tourism Barrie was ready to leap.

However, we understand that venturing into uncharted territory can be daunting. Given the vast amount of content the site contained, we had to strategically design the site's architecture and rely heavily on imagery to convey dynamic narratives. To assist the client in embracing a more daring and unconventional design, we workshopped multiple visual concepts, each with a distinct look and feel. Presenting options side-by-side enabled our client to confidently select elements from each that resonated with them. The result was impactful. However, beyond aesthetics, it was crucial for Tourism Barrie to offer its users a mobile-first, intuitive website, generate revenue through memberships, seamlessly integrate advertising opportunities, and deliver measurable results to the City. The build plan was crystal clear.

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Build.

Bold, fresh and confident.

We tailored Sitefinity-supported solutions to overhaul the client’s events calendar, enhance the site’s architecture, harness the power of imagery for compelling storytelling, and implement mobile-first solutions to encourage user engagement with member businesses. All while ensuring functionality and efficiency for our client. Understanding Tourism Barrie's resource boundaries and team size, our goal was to streamline processes as much as possible, facilitating their ability to conduct real-time updates and utilize automated solutions. We understood the importance of showcasing events that could be filtered, which was delivered through a tailored, user-friendly Sitefinity calendar which could also be easily updated by staff. Additionally, to ensure the maintenance of our client’s excellent Google rankings, we carefully considered updates to the new site’s architecture. Our focus was on creating streamlined, searchable content that would enhance user engagement while preserving analytics. Furthermore, to support the use of images in promoting member businesses and facilitating Tourism Barrie's monetization efforts, we implemented interactive image containers with text that users can browse.

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Downing Street's Website displayed on mobile

Engage.

“We used to see 11,000 people a year coming into our visitor’s centre and now our website is so good that people can get information on their own.”

For our client, the significance of straightforward navigation, accessible content, and live chat translates into reaching dramatically more tourists with the same effort as in the past – attracting many more visitors to the city. Moreover, through Sitefinity Insight, audience segments can be precisely targeted, and an outreach ROI can be calculated. Tourism Barrie shared that with nearly one million page views and very meaningful financial indicators, the City is highly satisfied with the impact of their efforts. The digital experience annually supports more than $61.5 Million going into the local economy, largely driven by over 650,000 people that stay in Barrie hotels. Through Flywheel’s Momentum process we continue to work with the client, constantly improving the site and preparing for the future. Most recently we built a portal that increases the value add for Tourism Barrie’s members.

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