Design Case Study - Rusty Parrot Lodge and Spa

Mary C. | 16 February 2005 |

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DESIGN CASE STUDY - RUSTY PARROT LODGE AND SPA
Craig Davis, Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc.

Customer Overview
This month, we look at a recently completed website overhaul and optimization for Rusty Parrot Lodge and Spa in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. They had a nice existing site, but didn’t feel that it was as effective as it could be. The new website overhaul started on September 17, 2004 and went live November 10, 2004, after customer approval.

Goals
The main goal was to enhance the website’s presence by creating a more appealing design, optimizing the website for search engines, and adding several new features to the site, including an easily accessible online reservations component. Website optimization is important for elevating page rank in search engines, ultimately to drive more traffic to the website.

Strategy
The several new features our design department added include an event calendar, a specials page, a monthly e-mail newsletter sign-up, a zoom-able map with printable directions, and Blizzard Tracker to measure the return on investment.

Displayed prominently on the website’s front page are ‘Book a Reservation’, ‘Online Specials’ and ‘Sign up for our Newsletter’, features that Blizzard believes are of paramount importance for every website associated with the hospitality industry.

With Blizzard’s ROI Tracker installed, we get an extremely clear picture of visitor behavior. We see what site visitors are looking for, how they find the website, what search terms they use, whether they are new visitors or returning visitors, what pages are viewed, and how many visitors actually book a room. (As we’re mentioned in previous newsletters, we can also track, in certain booking engines, the actual revenues generated by booking online. See a list of our partners.)

Results
The Rusty Parrot has seen an increase of approximately 3,000 visitors per month and 100 visitors per day in the few months we’ve been working with them. Our efforts have just begun, so we anticipate that these numbers will only increase. The graph below shows a clear picture of what is happening to their traffic.

The most popular page after the home page is the rooms page, which is the path we like to see. We also see that the specials and reservations pages are getting healthy traffic. This is reinforced by the fact that package bookings have been strong since the redesign.

The Rusty Parrot also has also signed up for Blizzard’s link building and page builder programs. To date, they have seen a 67% increase in link popularity; we expect to see a substantial increase as their link reputation grows.

Rusty Parrot Lodge and Spa Redesign

Conclusion
The winter months are proving to be successful ones for the Rusty Parrot, with a significant increase in business over last year. Blizzard’s marketing efforts continue with ongoing pay-per-click campaigns, extensive link building techniques, and additional submissions to online directories.

Jim Promo from the Rusty Parrot says, “We are very pleased with the results we have obtained thus far in our relationship with Blizzard. We’re seeing the many benefits of the new website design and optimization. The design department and our Promotion Account Manager, Jackie Binion, have been very responsive and helpful, not only in implementing the programs we wanted, but also in helping us understand and interpret all of the Internet information.”