VisitOKC.com redesign promises easier navigation and access to more useful content

Oklahoma City continues to be recognized nationally as one of the best places to live in and visit. More quality attractions, events, restaurants, retail shops and other amenities keep popping up across the metro, reinforcing OKC’s growing reputation for being a fun and cool place to hang out.

With so much to do and see in OKC for residents and leisure travelers alike, the OKC Convention and Visitors Bureau’s (Visit OKC) recently redesigned its website, VisitOKC.com, to help them find just the right spots and attractions for whatever plans they may have on their respective itineraries.

VisitOKC.com went live March 28, taking approximately 10 months to complete, said Lindsay Vidrine, Visit OKC’s vice president of destination marketing. So far, users have indicated they like the fresh look and feel of the redesigned website. But as far as what users love most of all about the site…that all depends on your perspective, she said.

Check out the redesigned VisitOKC.com

“If you’re a manager of one of the 14 neighborhood or entertainment districts, you like something different than if you are a leisure visitor,” Vidrine stated. “The districts also really love that we can highlight more content for their neighborhoods and the things that make our city unique. Our industry partners have had a positive response to it, as well.”

Since the redesign is barely two months old, more time is needed to gather data in order to correlate user trends; however, there is enough available data to show which pages draw the most traffic. That distinction belongs to the Events calendar as well as the Things To Do section, which are both found at the top of the webpage in an easy-to-find format.

“With summer travel getting ready to kick into high gear, we expect June to be a big month for website traffic,” Vidrine said.

The need to redesign Visit OKC’s old website was a long time coming, especially when you consider the last redesign occurred in 2014. Eight years between redesigns is like an eternity for today’s web standards.

“Our website was really old and built for a desktop experience,” Vidrine said. “About 70% of our current users are coming on a tablet or a mobile device, so we wanted to simplify the user experience and update the look and feel for how we display destination information.”

How quickly and efficiently users can navigate through the website is one of the most obvious improvements of the redesign. Simplifying the navigation was a top priority for the Visit OKC team, especially after fully understanding just how outdated their old website truly was. There is even better accessibility built into the new design.

“Now users aren’t frustrated with the site, and it’s easy to click through with your finger on a smaller screen,” Vidrine said.

Veteran users of VisitOKC.com will notice the new colors and fonts as well as more video capability, especially as they relate to incorporating OKC’s The Modern Frontier branding throughout the site. Downloading the video content is also much faster.

But one important distinction between the new version of VisitOKC.com and its predecessor is how various microsites are prominently displayed and accessed, namely MeetInOKC.com and OKCsports.org.

MeetInOKC.com is described as a one-stop shop for convention planners where they can access all sorts of information that they can use to plan their next regional or annual event, including updated information about available hotels and attractions, along with details on the new Oklahoma City Convention Center. Elevating Oklahoma City as a sports destination with its many championship-caliber facilities is a more-focused strategy of Visit OKC, and the OKCsports.org site should help in that regard.

This story originally appeared in the June 2022 edition of the VeloCity newsletter.