The Athens Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) has completely redesigned its website VisitAthensGA.com to give it the fresh and functional feel that users have come to expect. With user experience the top priority, the new website design allows visitors to access information when/wherever they want it and local Athens hospitality partners to easily manage their own content. The new website will allow the Athens CVB to continue to promote the city of Athens as a destination of choice in the most effective way possible.
When users access the site, they are able to see that the new website has a completely new feel. The design team planned the website with the city of Athens in mind. Everything from the banner images to background textures to fonts were chosen to reflect Athens’ position among the top college towns in America. An early visitor to the new website remarked, "I compared VisitAthensGA.com to websites of a few other college towns and this was fresher, more colorful and more enticing. It made me think of the town as more than a college town; it had the look of a vacation destination website."
The new website is organized in a way that makes the most sense and with the user experience in mind. Content, imagery and navigation are designed to be inspirational by providing ideas for Athens experiences. Even those who do not know exactly what they are looking for will be able to navigate the pages with ease. As the user scrolls down the page, their screen will fill with a variety of events so that tourists of all kinds will be targeted in one way or another.
The new VisitAthensGA.com now offers Responsive Web Design (RWD), which automatically adjusts content for an optimal viewing and interaction experience across a wide range of devices, including desktop, tablet and mobile phone.
Simpleview, a tourism industry leader with over 350 CVB clients, had the task of redesigning the website. The website is completely integrated with the Athens CVB’s Customer Relations Management (CRM) system, meaning all the CVB’s sales, marketing and consumer activities can be aligned, tracked and measured. The Athens CVB’s website license agreement with Simpleview will provide the Athens CVB with regular upgrades as they are pushed live to leading CVBs across North America and internationally.
A Website and Extranet Workshop is scheduled on October 22 for local hospitality partners interested in making full use of the new website to further promote their business or organization. Those interested in attending should contact Hannah Smith, Director of Marketing & Communications, at hsmith@VisitAthensGA.com.
Athens residents and visitors are encouraged to visit the new website at www.VisitAthensGA.com for the latest information on Athens events, attractions and travel information.
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About Simpleview
Based in Tuscan, Arizona, Simpleview has supported destination management organizations (DMOs) since 2001 with tools, knowledge and creativity to help them perform at the top of their game. Working with the world’s top cities and smallest towns, Simpleview believes that every DMO has a role to play in creating a better experience for the people who visit and a better life for the people who call it home. In 2007, Inc. Magazine began publishing the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing U.S. private firms. Simpleview ranked on that list and has secured a spot every year since, earning a place in an elite group of less than 400 companies nationwide. Simpleview has achieved that distinction by managing their business with the same approach they bring to customers: smart use of resources, visionary thinking, attention to everyday needs, hard work, planning ahead and never stopping at “good enough.” Today, Simpleview is a company of more than 150 people dedicated to destination marketing, both by working with individual DMOs and by helping the industry as a whole adapt, evolve and thrive.
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About the Athens Convention & Visitors Bureau
The Athens Convention & Visitors Bureau is a proactive sales and marketing organization whose primary goal is to increase the economic impact of the hospitality and visitor industry by attracting individual visitors, group tours, and meetings and conventions to Athens. Tourism WORKS for Athens, contributing $256 million in spending, 2,500 jobs, $48 million in wages earned, $9.53 million in state tax revenues and $7 million in local tax revenues in 2013.