Built with

A new website to champion a dynamic northern city.

Converting online visits into footfall, thanks to the DC Enterprise platform

The Problem

The Make it York DMO approached DestinationCore to help redevelop the Visit York website. The clients’ objectives included:

- Make the Visit York website the go-to tool for people planning a visit to York no matter what type of trip, including residents

- Encourage users to discover more about York through the implementation of on-site user discover tools and more visible blog content

- Encourage users to take more direct action – such as booking, outbound clicks, itinerary planning. Benchmark at site launch, track, and monitor performance

- Use the website as a tool to drive up the number of overnight stays, through the promotion of the accommodation offering in York

- Collect, track and report on ROI metrics which help to demonstrate the value of membership - such as booking, outbound clicks, pages views, listing visibility, ad views/impression for each individual member

- Provide a platform from which Visit York can grow advertising revenue and at the same time provided added value to members through increased visibility and exposure. More commerciality.

The Solution

The Visit York site has been built on the DestinationCore Enterprise platform.

Visit York receives in excess of 115,000 visitors per month to their online platform and needed a robust and flexible system that could handle this volume of traffic and offer a personalised experience for each and every visitor.

The new website gives business and leisure guests a visually impactful and intuitive experience from any device, anywhere in the world.

Not only has the website had a complete overhaul to improve the look and feel but it will also offers improved functionality such as global categories which group together content into user themes (such as Family Friendly) and date availability search for accommodation. Visit York’s popular hub pages have received an uplift too, with more dynamic and interactive content to be displayed, starting with the launch of the #LoveYork summer staycations campaign hub.

With over 75% of users accessing the visityork.org website on mobile devices, the new design brings a dynamic and user-friendly interface of the site’s mobile version, contributing to higher engagement and improved user journey.

Visit Website

Modules installed include

DC Advertising Module
DC Global Categories Module
DC Availability Search
DC Tiered Membership Structure
DC Business Login
DC Location Categorisation
DC Itinerary Entry Type
DC Multi-site CMS

The Results

- Since launch website traffic has increased at least 7% every month compared to 2019 (pre-pandemic)

- The site is regularly achieving more than 400,000 pages per month

- November ’21 saw the site achieve the highest volume of visitors in a single month ever - 15% up on the equivalent month in 2019

- The site consistently ranks No. 1 for ‘Things to do in York’ in Google - where the previous site did not (and as a result lost valuable authority in search)

- Significant increase in engagement with pages per session increasing from 1.85 to 2.82 and average session duration increasing from 1.6 to 2.12.

- The impact of the key achievements listed above has directly correlated with an increase in footfall. York BID produced a Tourist Advisory Board report in October 2021 which charts footfall for 2019, 2020 and 2021.

- 2021 footfall was broadly in line with 2019 footfall, with 2021 footfall exceeding 2019 in both May/June ’21 (directly after the site launched) and again in September ’21 (where website traffic was over 10% up on the equivalent month in 2019). This footfall growth was achieved despite visitor uncertainty relating to the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Our new website is designed to enhance the experience for both visitors to the city and the local businesses that use our platform to showcase themselves. The itinerary planning tool and improved booking system have all been designed to create a ‘customer first’, fully responsive experience - from the discovery and planning stages, right through to pre-arrival and check-in."

Ashley Young, Senior Marketing and Communications Manager at Make It York