The W³ Awards “honors creative excellence on the web, and recognizes the creative and marketing professionals behind award winning sites, videos and marketing programs, and is sanctioned and judged by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts, an invitation-only body consisting of top-tier professionals from a ‘Who’s Who’ of acclaimed media, interactive, advertising, and marketing firms.”
Olson Digital is proud to have recently accepted Gold and Silver awards in the tourism and travel categories for our work on the Virginia Scenic Roads & Byways website and application.
The Virginia Tourism Corporation (VTC) serves the Commonwealth of Virginia by supporting, maintaining, and expanding domestic and international tourism in order to generate revenue and employment for the state. Management sought to implement an online application featuring Virginia’s scenic byways to enhance the tourism experience.
With an initiative to provide Virginia visitors with an engaging way in which to discover the roads less travelled, the Virginia Tourism Corporation (VTC) called upon Olson Digital as a long-time digital partner to design and develop a web-based, mobile solution. The application would serve as one of many tactics that the VTC has employed in order to better connect with its tech-savvy audience.
Olson Digital’s challenge was to develop a simple to use, digital solution that would help visitors learn more about Virginia and make informed travel decisions. Based on expressed interests in history, wine and breweries, nature and more, users of Scenic Roads & Byways in Virginia would be provided with a highly tailored and digitally integrated way to explore everything the State for Lovers has to offer. In addition to implementing mapping software, developing back end customizations, and social platform integrations, the aesthetic presentation and mobile capabilities of the application needed to compete against other state applications with similar objectives, and the user experience of the application’s interface needed to be simplistic.
Olson Digital developed a responsive, single-page website that allows users to explore their interests in Virginia and learn about Virginia’s scenic byways. VTC’s web properties are evolving to align to the new Virginia is for Lovers brand standards, and the Scenic Roads & Byways in Virginia application needed to reflect the high-end, luxurious style that Virginia’s beauty evokes. Following a long-term strategic plan, Olson Digital implemented a strong technical and creative solution that would provide VTC’s tech-savvy audience with a simple, emotive, and technically high-performing exploration tool.
To provide travelers with the most up to date and locally unique information, VTC and Olson Digital partnered with the Virginia Department of Transportation to provide a wealth of content and rich imagery. With the goal to ultimately promote Virginia tourism, the Scenic Roads & Byways in Virginia solution is personalized, engaging and intuitive. The experience features byway articles, Virginia tourism blog content, search capability for numerous things to do around the state, social network sharing, weather integration, and geolocation for mobile users who wish to search within the context of their current GPS location.
ICF Olson deployed the interactive, responsive Scenic Roads & Byways in Virginia site exposing travelers to a variety of activities, events, scenic roads, and tourist destinations across the Commonwealth of Virginia. By putting relevant, content-rich information in front of Virginia travelers, the Scenic Roads & Byways in Virginia application promotes adventure and discovery, which in turn encourages them to stay longer and see and do more.
