Creating an interactive experience for tourists in Noble

The opportunity to design and launch a new website for the Noble County Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) was an honor, and a job that comes after years of personal passion for the work the CVB does.

I have the pleasure of working on a nearly daily basis, at my "day job", with the CVB, branded as "Visit Noble County". Our teams share an office because both organizations have a shared mission to ensure a thriving local economy.

After providing support for the past two years, maintaining and enhancing the CVB's existing website and providing editing support to publish monthly blog posts, I was asked to submit a proposal for a full website relaunch.

The "old site" was lacking some of the functionality Visit Noble County wanted to see - and making the edits required would have been more difficult, and costly, than starting anew.

"Before" screen shot of home page

Though WordPress is an incredible and versatile platform on which to build a website, making even simple text or image edits can be really challenging for a non-technical user. Heck, in my experience (and I'm always up for a technical challenge), every WordPress-based website is unique and presents a learning curve to navigate editing and maintenance. This is not an ideal situation for an organization without a budget dedicated to that kind of work.

The project began with a meeting of the staff at Visit Noble County, at which we created a wish list of features, and their vision came into focus. From there, I offered three different base designs to get the right "look and feel" before beginning to build the new site:

1. Option A offered a full-width, responsive style with little white space. This style is bold, graphic, and image driven.

2. Option B offered a mix of elements - some stretching the full width of any screen, but with more white space. This design can offer a nice mix that provides room for great graphic emphasis but a break for the eyes, along the way.

3. Option C offered a centered, traditional design with large blank panels on either side of the content. The benefit of this type of design is that no matter how wide the user's screen is, the content will not shift or morph. The downside is it can be a bit boring.

All three design options are "responsive", meaning all can be viewed on a mobile device with ease and no loss of functionality. I wasn't surprised when Option B was chosen.

A tourism website is chocked full of data. Tourism partner contact details, lots of images, and current events that change all the time. Physical assets come and go, partners come into and go out of business, etc. This is why we were all pretty excited about the opportunity to build a "back end" that allows administrative staff at Visit Noble County an easy way to maintain data.

"Before" accommodations page with features subject to frequent change.

Visit Noble County's new site was built on the Wix platform. I suggested Wix because of the ease of (creating and) updating any number of databases to help make data entry (content additions) goof-proof and editing easy. Wix's Dynamic Data features enable an organization to update content on pages without risking changes to design. This is a huge benefit to many smaller organizations that lack onstaff technical expertise.

"After", the new site provides several databases that drive content. This screenshot is from the "back end" of the new site and is not visible to website visitors.

A sample view of Visit Noble County's database of "partners". This is how staff maintain much of the new website's content.

Using the databases (tables) and Dynamic Data connectors, the content visitors see on the new Visit Noble County website is interactive, meaning users (on some pages) have the option to narrow their search by a variety of different choices. Visitors will see options to look for things to do, places to eat (and drink), and places to stay by location, amenities, and even based on Visit Noble County's recommendations for different audiences (solo traveler, couples, friends groups, and even dog-friendly points of interest.)

In order to facilitate the significant enhancements in site engagement and use, Catchy Creations provided Visit Noble County with data templates created in Excel, making it easier for the client to choose, edit, and otherwise prepare the data they wanted to see on the new site.

"After" home page, with fun, animated dog highlighting the option to search tourism assets by "audience".

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/a8201e_06974ac735df4b1e8b5494aa8220fa21/240p/mp4/file.mp4

Pages on the new Visit Noble County site are easy to navigate, linking from one to another, enabling exploration as the visitor's mind switches gears. Each featured asset has a landing page with contact information and more, including (in most cases) a link to the partner's own website or landing page.

"After" sample page with filter to narrow search of Sports & Recreation assets.

Filtered results shown on new website, with buttons to link to partner landing page.

New partner landing pages provide a cross-reference to nearby attractions, content made possible by Dynamic Data connectors. Visitors can continue on to the partner's website for even more relevant information.

Going forward, the Visit Noble County staff has much more control over the critical content of their website, with immediate access (no need to await the response of a technical consultant). When design elements need an update, the organization can reach out to Catchy Creations for low-cost maintenance.

The timeline (about 13 weeks from start to finish, over the holidays):

• First meeting: October 10, 2022

• Proposal submitted: October 20

• Proposal accepted: October 24

• Website design phase: October 24 - November 22

• Meeting to review first draft of design: November 22

• Meeting to review second draft of design: January 4

• CVB prep of database content: October 24, 2022 - January 15, 2023

• Import of database content: January 15

• Designs finalized and tested: January 15-25

• Live launch: January 27

It was a pleasure to work with the CVB team promoting the extraordinary tourism assets in Noble County. Contact me about helping your organization enhance its digital experience for your patrons!

Visit Noble County

Creating a digital image that matches the quality of reality

What a joy it was to meet the proprietors of Shipshewana North Park, offering Amish log cabin lodging, camping cabins, campground, and more in Northeast Indiana!

I was elated to receive a "cold call" from Uma and even more happy to hear she learned about me from a Google search for website designers in the area. She shared with me that she had experienced more than one website consultant who, like so many do, left them hanging as their website design began to degrade.

There are so many web editing tools out there, and it is no doubt difficult to know where to turn for most small businesses. This is exactly why I founded Catchy Creations!

The first step was, of course, to meet with Uma and her husband, Sam. Together, we looked over the "old site" and uncovered the plan for a new one. Upon my arrival at the property, I knew right away this was going to be a great opportunity to transform the perceptions anyone might gain from only seeing the current website. The grounds are beautifully wooded with mature pines and green lawns, not the image that immediately came to my mind when I first explored online.

"Before" home page, constructed on a platform with extremely limited user engagement options. The site suffered from some overlapping elements as well.

"Before" home page, scrolled down to the footer, shows a lot of text and tiny images.

The scope of this project was well defined. The proprietors wanted to see a "modern" design with some movement, larger images to represent what they have to offer, and the ability to download the park map. I also noted opportunities to embed TripAdvisor reviews, to better highlight their excellence, and enhance the engagement of visitors looking to visit one of Northeast Indiana's most popular tourism destinations in the heart of Amish country.

"Before" content included a section about area attractions, but without any imagery.

I almost immediately got to work preparing three different design styles from which to choose. The client selected a mix of full-width elements and page-centered elements to allow for some blank space, while still highlighting images to promote the property and many amenities offered. As soon as I got started on the design phase, I realized I needed some inspiration - a logo! So, I offered up a few designs for consideration.

I found inspiration for the logo design from the white silhouette on the park's existing site. The first iteration of the new logo was a little "monotone" and the client, who has a great eye for design, suggested we colorize it. The result is as seen on the new site:

"After" - the new site landing page is bold and bright, featuring the new logo and slideshow of images in the header. The park's excellent TripAdvisor reviews are also front and center.

"After" utilizes Dynamic Data to enable the proprietors to make essential content updates without risk of affecting design elements. For example, they can swap out these images quickly and easily in the site's "back end" on Wix.com.

New decor, a price change, a new in-room amenity, these things are all likely to happen after the website goes live. Rather than expecting the property's proprietors to be confident about editing web pages, Wix.com provides a user interface in which elements can be changed without entering the page design at all. I choose Wix more often than not for small business projects because it is affordable, user friendly, and pretty darned amazing in terms of features included in base hosting packages.

Though the client does not have rights or an archive of photos from neighbors around the region, they nonetheless want to help encourage their visitors to explore and stay as long as possible. We amped up the graphic design of the Area Attractions page, also using Dynamic Data content, to encourage more engagement on the site.

"After" design features include a more intriguing and interactive page to explore other area attractions. Links connect directly to property websites and landing pages.

"After" displays the Dynamic Data the site owner can easily update on the back end of Wix. A floating side menu helps ensure the user doesn't miss any critical information provided.

This project was fun, allowing me the freedom to create from scratch in many ways, with the opportunity to continuously improve as a new camping season comes in the months ahead. Uma and Sam plan to keep making this site better and better, with higher quality images that we can also make "clickable" to enlarge, leaving site visitors with the impression intended - high quality and affordable lodging options in Shipshewana!

From beginning to end, the project took just six weeks (and was completed over Christmas and the holiday season). If you are a camper and/or love nature and cabins, you must check out Shipshewana North Park!

Shipshewana North Park

Making Kendallville Main Street look like $2 million bucks

When the City of Kendallville was awarded a $2 million PreservINg Main Street award in late 2021, the organization tasked with helping to steward and distribute those funds to properties along Main Street knew it was time to give their branding a facelift, too. Experience the Heart of Kendallville was ready for a new look!

I was delighted that Catchy Creations LLC was trusted with facilitating the process of determining what "message" the newly expanded board of directors of Kendallville's Main Street USA Affiliate (and Indiana Main Street Affiliate) organization wanted to convey. The process of rebranding began with a full board meeting at which we talked about:

• What message the existing brand conveyed (Experience the Heart of Kendallville)

• Who the primary audiences are for the new brand

• Which stakeholders are most important to embrace the new brand

• What words best describe the "vibe" for new branding

• What downtown features are most important to promote in new branding

Coming out of the first meeting, I had a pretty good idea of my homework, which was mostly to determine what sorts of shapes, colors, and font styles would best support the consensus reached during brainstorming. Once those basic design decisions were made, I got to work creating some logo samples. "Round 1" of logo designs offered the team six unique looks. The board assigned a task force with whom I worked to narrow down those choices.

When we got to "Round II", I brought back three of the options from Round 1, each with two variations. The task force met, reviewed, and as we reviewed we revisited the original decisions reached by the full board about demographics and messaging. This led to a "Round III" of samples, which featured just two designs. Sensing the team was leaning towards one design over the other, I offered eight variations of it, plus a couple variations of the lesser desired option to make sure we didn't eliminate anything quite yet.

Rather than meeting in person each time, we conducted most these "Rounds" of reviews by blind online survey. This made the process move quickly and smoothly, with full participation of the task force and without prejudice or peer pressure.

We called "Round IV" the "Semifinalist round". In this round of samples I wound up harkening back to one of the Round I designs that had not moved forward, based solely on "shape". I added some new elements to the most popular Round II design and offered up six variations (mostly with different font styles). This led us to narrowing down to the Top 3 design choices of the committee.

When the full board met again, the Top 3 choices of the committee were presented - not for feedback, but for a final, full board vote. (The task force was trusted to manage feedback and requests on behalf of the full board to keep this process moving). A simple board vote revealed the new logo, as well as color choices:

What is notable about this process for Historic Downtown Kendallville is:

• The color palette mimics two other industry leaders, which strengthens branding and recognition of the role the organization plays in the community

• The "heart" pays homage to the organization's origins as Experience the Heart of Kendallville

• The lamp post provides an historic element, important to this organization, and is an exact reproduction of the real (unique) posts produced locally

• The oval shape is modern and conveys "action", also important to the organization

• The simple HISTORIC DOWNTOWN font choice is modern

• The cursive "Kendallville" a bit more nostalgic

Did we meet the board's objectives? You decide - and feel free to weigh in with your comments!

• Entrepreneurs are the top audience for branding

• Brand needs to convey that Kendallville is unique and active

• Brand needs to be gender-neutral

• Brand needs to be playful

• Brand needs to be modern

• Brand needs to be youthful

• Brand needs to respect historical significance

See the brand in use