BACKGROUND
Parks Victoria is responsible for managing a diverse and ever-expanding estate across Victoria - from national to state parks, marine protected area, reserves and metro parks. Welcoming over 106-million visits across these culturally and naturally siginficant landscapes, a digital project was funded by the state government to deliver a deliver a significant uplift to their consumer facing website and enhance digital marketing capabilities.
With a lack of engagement and high bounce rates across the website, park visitors were turning to third-party information providers in the awareness and consideration stages of their trip planning. This meant that there was a missed opportunity to educate, prepare and guide visitors as well as efficiently manage visitation across the estate.
Approach
To eliminate assumptions, it was important to bring the end-users voice to the table. Working closely with the UX designers, project manager and business analysists, we ran empthy and user journey workshops to better understand the overarching customer journey - from discovery, right through to conversion and retention.
And, to understand the organisations aims and paint points with the current state, we interviewed key stakeholders across the web, education, operations and park management teams. Speaking with rangers highlighted issues at the ground level and identified the value in an internal database rangers used for park management activies and consumed the information that would enhance the users digital experience, such as trail, campground, attraction and gpx data. While interviewing park visitors gave an insight into their decison journeys, personalities and expecations.
Results
As a reult, we were able to:
develop digital solutions that would enhance the visitor experience while still aligning with the organisations values
write and develop compelling content that enhanced the users journey across the estate and encouraged responsible tourism
eliminate manual processes when it came to visitor management by consuming data from this database
give ground staff such as rangers greater power over the digital prenence of the estate that they manage
implement a content strategy that ensured parks would remain healthy and intact for future generations to enjoy
position Parks Victoria as the source of truth for any information and inspiration relating to experiences and attractions managed across their estate
Website: parkweb.vic.gov.au
Focus: Content production, copywriting, content strategy, product development
