WEBSITE USABILITY

Enticing more tourists online by thinking like a tourist.

Situation

The New Brunswick Department of Tourism & Parks (NBT) wanted a website that would provide tourists with all the information they needed, in an easy-to-use format, to select New Brunswick as a travel destination. Unfortunately, the original design of the NBT website was structured to mirror their printed travel guide. The result was that people were having difficulty finding the information they were looking for online. In short, the site was not user friendly.

Solution

T4G was brought in to identify ways the website could be revamped to create a more positive user experience. This went beyond just looking at the site and making a few suggestions. First of all, T4G approached the project with the tourist's point of view in mind. Next, discussions with NBT about what type of content to feature on the website became focussed on what content was most important to the user.

From these meetings, T4G created new Information Architecture and Wireframe documents. These were then tested online in five geographic locations. Following the testing, T4G proposed a number of quick fixes, functionality changes and business/marketing enhancements that would all improve the usability of the site and extend the user experience.

RESULTS

With these recommendations, NBT was able to prioritize the changes to make in order to create the site they had initially envisioned. One of the functionality improvements implemented was a more visible trip planner that allowed people to create, save, print and email their own to-do list of cities, accommodations and attractions to see. This led to a reduction in the number of requests for the printed guide. Feedback from people about the updated website has been extremely positive, and the site has seen an increased traffic rate of 20%.

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