Design & Placemaking Award
2022
Nominee
Finalist
Shortlist
Winner
Website Redesign and Digital Journey
Visit Jersey
Visit Jersey’s objective was to create a dynamic new mobile-first website that inspires visitors to travel to Jersey year-round, provides an enriched customer experience that appeals to Jersey’s best prospects, and drives partner referrals, whilst achieving internal team efficiencies through a user-friendly Content Management System (CMS).
Jersey.com plays a vital role in promoting all the island of Jersey has to offer, serving as a vehicle for building awareness amongst Jersey’s core markets and a key source of referrals for industry partners. The new site was developed with a research-led approach to ensure it meets the needs of visitors and industry partners alike and aims to inspire users at all steps of their journey, from enticing them to book a holiday to Jersey to planning their on-island experiences, choosing where to stay, and a trip planner – created using MapBox integration with listing data – to curate and share customised itineraries. The site is brimming with inspirational stories and itineraries, featuring an image-led design driven by powerful auto-cropping AI, interactive maps and more. The new Jersey.com was also designed to be mobile-first, after research showed that in 2021 60% of user visits were from mobile devices, with this figure growing year-on-year.
In addition to an overhauled site architecture/navigation and mobile-first design, the new Jersey.com is multilingual to accommodate Jersey’s core markets (UK, France, Germany) and integrates key features including intelligent site search, enhanced UGC integration, and an online portal for industry partners to submit, moderate and manage their listings. The online portal was developed at portal.jersey.com ahead of the development of the main consumer website. An API was then developed between the portal and the website with Algolia adopted to deliver a highly-performant listing search facility on the website whereby industry listings submitted via the online portal could be very quickly surfaced through advanced filtering and categorisation.
Judges Comments
Here is a summary of the judges comments for the winner of the Design & Placemaking Award - Awarded to Visit Jersey for the 'Website Redesign & Digital Journey'.
Why it's a winner
Visit Jersey's entry to the X. Award's Design and Placemaking category stands apart because of what they've been able to achieve as a small destination, yet with a dedication to following digital best practice.
The website redesign showcases the uniqueness of 'The Island Break', by following all of the latest design trends when it comes to features, functionality, web design and delivering a clear and consistent brand experience which supports the user journey. The integration of the product database, with features and templates throughout the site, including the interactive map, provides a seamless transition from inspiration and discovery, to planning. On the other hand, the use of vertical content features carry over the visual-social-mobile discovery format users have become familiar with.
What it taught us
The destination website still has an important role to play in today's fragmented and distributed digital environment. As the brand home for everything the destination has to offer, it is important to continue to invest in exceptional digital experiences. Things like having a sound product database, offering features like interactive maps that are key to orientation and serving-up visual storytelling ,which encourages sequential discovery, are key to a strong digital brand position.
Scoring
The judges were impressed with what had been achieved by Visit Jersey and scored them highly across all four categories, which measured Execution, Impact, Creativity and Strategy. When judging on every pillar, the results speak for themselves noting, in particular, the excellent early results witnessed in terms of impact. This is a clear example of a small destination punching above its weight.
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