The Brief:
The River Valley Lodge is a legacy family business based on the banks of the third-longest river in NZ, The Rangitikei. The lodge has been a desired destination for people around the world for obvious reasons. It has a capacity to handle 100 people per night and before the pandemic, the lodge used to get healthy traffic of over 11,000 tourists a year, mostly consisting of backpackers. The website was the hub to attract these customers and the hub required a facelift and a new positioning.
The Challenge:
The pandemic had slowed down the international traffic to both the website and the actual lodge. Our job in hand was to sell domestic tourism without overtly selling to achieve full occupancy for the week and not just weekends. This required a bit of work as we were meant to reposition both the brand “Rivervalley” and the activities surrounding it. The lodge with its pristine surroundings rightfully boasted of services namely River Valley Rafting, River Valley Stables, River Valley Lodge, The Kitchen at River Valley, and The Farm at River Valley which are brands in their own right.
The solution:
Based on the positioning, audience, and activities we started crafting each vertical as a unique section on the website with the underlying sentiment of rejuvenation which is the ethos of the lodge. The website was fairly exhaustive and the UI/UX had to be in tandem with the complex navigation structure. Armed with new images, design, and content that complimented our search marketing efforts, the website oozed class. With the front end ready, the backend had eCommerce integrated with the payment gateway and CRM.
The Outcome:
A professional world-class destination website neatly lays out all the services. The new positioning and content catapulted the organic rankings from pages two and three to page one of Google. Display & remarketing campaigns leading traffic to the new website generated 70,000 impressions and 32% growth in leads month-on-month
Showcase:
