Benefits Of A Website Redesign – It’s an Investment

Have you ever observed someone get ready for a job interview? He or she most likely put a lot of thought into selecting the “right” outfit to make a great first impression. Similar to a job interview, your website is one of the best ways to make a first-class impression with potential guests or clients. The Internet is the fastest way to market your property; millions of users, all over the world, have access to it. Since your website is representing your property 24 hours per day, every day of the year, its appearance and content are crucial to your marketing efforts. While your website may have been up-to-date three years ago, it may, in fact, may be harming you today. The ever-changing Internet is keeping us at Blizzard Internet on our toes. The structure of our company, the services that we deem essential and the marketing techniques we utilize for clients are constantly evolving to respond to the dynamic nature of the Internet. Updating the appearance of your site is really an investment; see for yourself…

CLIENT OVERVIEW
Newport Beachside Resort, located in Miami Beach, Florida is a luxury hotel with resort features and amenities. This South Florida property attracts both small and large groups, and offers beachfront activities, comfortable suites, and downtown attractions, just minutes from Miami and Fort Lauderdale.

CHALLENGE
Newport Beachside Resort looked to Blizzard Internet Marketing’s expertise for a fresh website redesign and a strategy to increase its online presence. Newport realized that their promotional efforts were only effective and important if their site converted visitors to guests. Prior to the redesign, the website was not nearly as successful in this crucial role as it could be.

*Dropdown navigation was not browser- or user-friendly

*Most links were either images or image maps, not text

*Call-to-action buttons were not clear, making it hard to book

*The homepage alone contained 84 validation errors

*The site was formatted in a table-based layout

*Site expandability (new pages, etc.) was limited

*Global maintenance (header links, etc.) was difficult and time consuming

STRATEGY
Blizzard took on this challenge by offering Newport a cutting-edge design layout using Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) technology. This, in turn, created an easy-to-use navigation system, clean coding for the search engines, and an innovative way to help portray their family oriented offerings. Newport’s new website now offers visitors the following user-friendly and search engine-friendly applications:

*New website uses CSS layout

*Dropdown navigation uses CSS and is extremely user-friendly

*The site remains true in all browsers

*Call-to-action buttons are easily located

*The site reflects Newport’s family-oriented image

*Links are text links, making them readable for search engines

*Global maintenance is easier to conduct

*The site was designed to be expandable; adding a new page is now much easier

*Each page of the website is optimized to SEO standards

*All pages of the site are valid XHTML 1.0. and CSS

RESULTS
*Results compare February 2006 to February 2007, when the new site went live.

*Number of page views increased by 51,640

*Number of total visits increased by 4,633

*Number of organic search visits increased by 3,119

*Number of calls increased by 15%

Through Blizzard Call Tracking, we know that:

Newport received 2,945 calls in February 2007, 1,612 of which were unique (no repeat) calls. This is a 15% increase over the same month in 2006.

The reservation line was answered 99% of the time in February 2007, and the average call duration was three minutes, 22 seconds. The length of these calls is excellent, as industry statistics indicate that calls longer than three minutes result in reservations.

CONTACT
For more information about how Blizzard Internet Marketing can improve your online revenue generation, please contact the Business Development Team at 888-840-5893 or RFP@BlizzardInternet.com.

Stephanie Hedberg – Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc.