Introducing a new website and re-branding for the Waikiki Trolley! The site was built on a CMS platform that allows WT’s entire Marketing Department to author their own website. Many folks have bleed for this site so a big mahalo to the gang at Waikiki Trolley: Maki, Dale, KC, Michie, Davilin, Sylvia, Jackie, Nana, Tamiko, Joel, Amanda and Lorna – great job bloggers!!! Also thx to the Storymanager Gang: John LeBlanc (tech), Kaui Makamae (pics), Kai Holthaus (tech), Adam Kaye (tech), Mia the Dawg (sniff-testing) and me (Steve Sue, strategy/design). Thanks guys for kicking butt on this one!!!
FYI, here’s the “Before” site. It was a nice site, but the new one is tied in to a new brand strategy based on owning the color ORANGE in Waikiki. Soon to come: re-skinned Trolley Cars, new Map Guides, Logo Merchandise and all kinds of stuff…
What’s strategically cool about this site is that we’re using a blogging strategy to chat up all the cool places visitors can get to on the Trolley. That helps explain why the Trolley is such a good deal. Additionally, all that blog content helps our search rankings at places like Google. More content, more traffic, more sales. So as we went to launch, the site already had over 100 posts on cool Honolulu places and the list continues to grow daily.
And we repositioned the company through a new tagline, “The Fun Way to See Hawaii” and re-branded the Waikiki Trolley look and logo. Yup, Tommy Trolley got a new shirt! Other communications programs like Map Guides and re-wrapping Trolley cars are in production as of this writing. We’re also integrating other cool web stuff like online ticket purchasing, social media, google maps, traveler tips, concierge services, etc…
And there’s more… we also super-charged teaser content and the buying chute to make it SELL! Before & After:
BTW, after a soft launch and zero promotions, our first month’s analytics show that the content strategy has resulted in Unique Visitors up 1,243%, Page Views up 40%, Bounce Rate down 30% and Average Time on Site up 67%. And we just got through our first SEO pass last week so are expecting to slam it next month… Alooooooha!
EPILOGUE: As of 9/8/10, results continue to ramp up… sweeeeet!
