The client:
Bellarine Tourism, the peak tourism body for the Bellarine Peninsula, is a member-based organisation responsible for the coordination and representation of tourism members through planning and implementation of a range of marketing and development initiatives to advance tourism in the region. The Bellarine Taste Trail brings together a range of Bellarine Peninsula tourist, accommodation, and food and beverage providers to offer visitors a unique "experience framework" based around food and wine.
The trigger:
Bellarine Tourism identified a need to define the Bellarine Taste Trail with a relevant, comprehensive and market-focussed web presence. As a visitor attraction, the Bellarine Taste Trail needed to compete against other well-established food and wine trails in Victoria (and beyond) so it required a sophisticated yet functional approach. Bellarine Tourism chose DDG to develop its new online vehicle.
The journey:
More than 70% of visitors to the Bellarine Peninsula are day- and weekend-trippers from Melbourne, meaning the Bellarine Taste Trail competes for the tourist dollar against almost any other similar offering in the state, including the Yarra Valley.
"Our first task was to understand what was iconic about the Bellarine Taste Trail when compared to other taste trails," explained Jim Thompson, DDG’s Director – Web Services. "We learnt that the coastal aspect of the Bellarine Peninsula, with the bay on one side and the ocean on the other, is a defining factor and that there are unique experiences available on The Bellarine that are not offered elsewhere. Our challenge would be to develop a solution to emphasise these iconic features whilst conveying the complete offering in an easy-to-navigate format."
"We researched the complete 'who, what, why, when and where' of the food and wine experience market to understand who the website was communicating with and what they wanted or needed to know."
The solution:
The fresh Bellarine Taste Trail website pushes the iconic, Bellarine-differentiating content to the surface for ready access.
It supersedes traditional menu-driven sites with a feature-focussed home page that offers visitors a feast of entry points, depending on their particular interest.
Images of regional highlights (such as lighthouses, the Blues Train, restaurants, wineries, seafood and golf courses) rotate through alongside the incomparable Taste Trail Icons (Portarlington Mussels, Drysdale Goats Cheese, The Heads Restaurant and more). Sample itineraries zone in on experience themes such as families, couples, romance, blokes' breaks, girls' getaways and more.
Latest news and events, events, social media links, discovery cues to specific regional providers, newsletter sign-ups plus a fool-proof navigation bar lead the way to maps, packages and media info, ensuring that every visitor can access and be engaged by the content they seek.
"It’s all there, with an array of obvious site visitor pathways," said Jim. "We’ve focussed on bringing the content to the surface rather than drawing the visitor click-by-click deeper into a complicated site, where backing out can seem the only option. Here, navigating from one area to another is a natural progression."
The site shares the exposure for the Bellarine Tourism members evenly across the site, making sure everyone gets a voice and a variety of visitor activity directed to their particular offering.
The client perspective:
It’s early days, with just a soft launch so far, but already the tourism operators of the Bellarine Peninsula have expressed their satisfaction in the way they are showcased through the site.
Feedback from Geelong Otway Tourism, an affiliate body for the wider region, has also been extremely positive
Bellarine Tourism is planning a launch campaign around the site encompassing media coverage and printed collateral, and is pleased to have a "launchable" website that covers the full gamut of their members’ diverse offerings.
"DDG’s proposal impressed us with their undertaking to deliver a finished product within an all-inclusive package. We had a set budget and really needed to know where we were headed cost-wise.
Very early in the project, the DDG team demonstrated a real feel for what we needed. They worked us through a wireframe process so we could get a good sense of the mechanics of the site and how it would work, without getting bogged down in design details. The wireframe phase made it much easier for us to understand how the content would be arranged and accessed.
The relationship with DDG was always positive and their back-up support remains excellent.
We are very satisfied with the way the project developed and with the outcome. We know other tourism bodies are now looking to the Bellarine Taste Trail website as an example of what is possible.
I would absolutely recommend DDG to others seeking a website development and will certainly consider using their services again as need arises."
Hugo T Armstrong
Chairman, Bellarine Tourism