Amelia Island CVB A Website Re-Do as Stunning as the Destination It Represents Creating Sensational Websites is Our Thing
Starmark has been agency of record for the Amelia Island Convention & Visitor Bureau for three years. In that time, we’ve become experts at expressing the brand and marketing the destination, including its website AmeliaIsland.com. At seven years old, the site was due for a comprehensive refresh — one that would balance strategy and analysis with creativity — and ultimately help consumers plan their trips to Amelia Island.
A strategic springboard
In order to achieve our client’s goal of becoming a best-in-class detention website, we started with an SEO audit and 150-page strategy to determine the best navigation, keywords and high-value pages based on user visits over the last 10 years. The audit revealed the high value/high priority pages that required the most attention from the team to build success.
Technical & Content Strategy + Audience Review & Journeys
The strategy also included content, analytic and technical performance audits of the current site; an extensive competitor review (32 tourism sites in all); along with a comprehensive content strategy to define the singular goal of each key section and/or page. This ensured content would logically align with a visitor’s needs and also improve SEO effectiveness. We then created an information architecture that demonstrated the current and recommended states of the entire website’s sitemap.
Information Architecture
Now that the technical and strategic needs were addressed, it was time to make it all look and sound beautiful — while ensuring functionality. We had a content migration plan as part of the strategy, and we leveraged a brand new photo/video shoot that Starmark delivered as part of the creative campaign the year before.
A hard-working site that looks and feels like paradise
Our bespoke UI design took readers on a visual journey through a breathtaking Amelia Island experience that was tailored to their individual needs and wants. Compelling features included unique micro-animations, videos and stunning imagery. Our design system and patterns ensured it was all cohesive and replicable to maintain a harmonious look and feel on desktop and mobile.
Design System
Design Patterns
An in-depth analytics audit, which included user session history, search trends and click-path, revealed that users on the island were looking for different content than those that were not. To ensure they find exactly what they need and minimize clutter, we personalized the homepage content with the help of geo-location.
Travel Guide Slider
In order to migrate the 6,853-page site, we reviewed and organized all pages into four categories: pages that were duplicates, pages that could be migrated as is, pages that needed to be created as new, and pages that needed to be deleted. This extensive clean-up eliminated 6,102 pages, resulting in 841 pages on the new site, which included 425 business listings, 225 blog posts, and 146 events. The next step was to architect a database that organized the business listings into categories and tags, allowing us to filter the listings and further optimize the site.
Starmark’s writing team crafted 25 high-value pages of informative, SEO-driven copy that told the story of Amelia Island brand’s eloquent tone and voice. We also wrote the introductory copy for all 10 of the site’s Travel Guides, which invited the reader to immerse themselves into each unique experience.
The next wave
Dynamic, immersive and highly effective, the new AmeliaIsland.com website launched in October 2023; and feedback from the industry and our media partners so far has been highly complimentary. But our work is never done. As we host and manage the site, we continue to measure and optimize as needed with ongoing content marketing, search engine optimization, and performance optimization programs. The strategy is informed by the topics our targets are searching for and ensures we continue to provide fresh, relevant content for users as well as search engines.
The new AmeliaIsland.com website was an exciting opportunity for Starmark to build upon its partnership with the Amelia Island CVB. The website introduced inspirational new ways to showcase the breadth and depth of the destination. As a result, Amelia Island is on target to achieve record-setting visitation numbers for the third year in a row.
— Paul Beirnes, Vice President, Amelia Island Convention & Visitors Bureau