— Visit Philly — A New
Philadelphia

Redesigning VisitPhilly.com was a passion project. Happy Cog calls Philadelphia home: we live here; we work here; and we beat the drum for the City of Brotherly Love. When we answered the bell to work with the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation (GPTMC), we were thrilled to help them refresh visitors’ perceptions of Philadelphia and its five-county region with a site that delivers a visually engaging design, simplified wayfinding, and a robust publishing solution.

Launched in 1997, gophila.com, one of GPTMC’s most important marketing vehicles, had started to show its age. It needed a facelift, and the design’s DNA prevented it from optimally engaging visitors with vibrant, dynamic, and engaging content. The site was also hampered by excessive navigation, which confused users instead of helping them get their bearings. Philadelphia is an evolving city; tourists who visited primarily to see the Liberty Bell, run the Rocky steps, and eat a cheesesteak were now attending Phillies games, dining at hot restaurants like Zahav, and rocking at joints like Johnny Brenda’s.

Upending preconceived notions of the city was no easy task. Happy Cog’s solution was to not avoid Philadelphia’s classic icons, but to craft a stronger holistic portrait of the city by also showcasing some of its lesser-known gems. Thankfully, for a period of years, GPTMC had been amassing an impressive library of photo assets that documented the city’s blossoming neighborhoods, diverse and abundant dining scene, architecture, and nightlife. The redesigned site combines these beautiful images of inspiring locations with a friendly editorial voice that is more consistent with a travel magazine. This highly visual approach (supported by a strong and appropriate content platform) not only enhances the site’s ability to engage visitors, but it also assists with trip planning activities.

Happy Cog and GPTMC tackled the user experience by modeling the trip planning process out step by step, and then analyzing existing and proposed content for its ability to support visitors every step of the way. For example, what are the motivating factors for choosing a city? A museum? A restaurant? A method of travel? A hotel? By using the trip-planning experience to frame the site’s navigation, visitors to the site can browse more easily to the content that makes the most sense. The result is a sublime balance between a planning tool and a rich category browsing experience, with logical support for taking action when and where it’s most appropriate.

To manage it all and distribute content authorship across the organization, GPTMC needed a system that was great out-of-the-box, yet flexible enough to extend and integrate with social platforms and partner organizations. ExpressionEngine (or EE) was the clear choice. EE’s straightforward administrator UI enabled GPTMC’s editorial team to dive right in and get to work, allowing our developers to code XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript with real-life website copy. There was never a worry of real copy breaking the layout after coding was complete.

Launched alongside the "With Love, Philadelphia XOXO®" marketing campaign, VisitPhilly.com was immediately recognized by stakeholders and industry leaders as one of the nation’s top DMO (Destination Marketing Organization) sites. Since January 2010, VisitPhilly.com has been recognized for excellence with 12 awards and seen its yearly traffic increase by 37%.