Website management at its funnest
Illuminate SF is a city-wide gallery of light and digital art in San Francisco. As an core proponent of San Francisco Travel’s seasonal winter campaign, Illuminate SF: Festival of Light is a month long celebration that observes over 40 installations, internationally renowned artists, and an artistic exploration of different San Francisco neighborhoods.
Identifying the obstacle:
In the beginning, Illuminate SF was an idea with great potential. Nothing like this had existed before in San Francisco and creating a new campaign incited an exciting trailblazing spirit for success. However, facing a tight deadline, there was a necessity to move quickly with conviction and efficiency. As with any project, there is a lot to think about; questions such as:
How can we make easily digestible content that accurately reflects all light art installations, artists, guided tours, and self-guided itineraries?
How can we bring together all this content so that they could all live seamlessly in one environment?
What’s the best way to promote and track interest in neighborhood guided tours?
How will we achieve our goals with a tighter budget?
On top of our organic ways of gaining web traffic, how do we leverage local and international media?
Hypothesis Strategy:
Imagine this problem like building a car. Starting with the wheels, there was a solid plan to build content. Those four wheels that would roll the project into motion represented installations, artists, guided tours, and self-guided itineraries. The car’s engine consists of leadership and agile team members working together closely to drive Illuminate SF forward.
Identifying the car’s frame to drive Illuminate SF was the biggest problem. All of the ontent could have lived on San Francisco Travel’s main website, but the website’s layout, infrastructure, and its other uses suggested that this was not the most efficient nor ideal method to move forward. It would have been like using a bus to drive a flashy idea like Illuminate SF.
We imagined the Illuminate SF environment filling basic needs to be fully digital, aesthetically pleasing, simple, and nimble. This led to the decision that Illuminate SF needed a dedicated environment and creating a website fit those needs perfectly.
The new Illuminate SF website would address basic questions like who the artists are, what the installations are about, where to find them, and why light art makes San Francisco even more magical during longer winter nights.
Content would be created with more general narratives and would be written to build awareness; easily digestible and attractive to anyone in San Francisco looking for something to do. It would have to begin with the most fundamental information, with details including installation name, location, and artists involved. The content would also showcase some of the more extravagant and perhaps more instagram-worthy installations, as well as highlight exploring different SF neighborhoods with light art. Additionally, evergreen content such as self-guided itineraries and maps would continue to live on the website even while the Festival of Light was over and would serve as SEO boosting content pieces. Guided tours were also essential to the Illuminate SF experience because many of the installations required more context and further explanation. With a tight budget, it was important to work with volunteers and the artists to deliver memorable walking and bike tours.
At the time, the initial version of the website garnered about 800 views with a high bounce rate of 80%. Furthermore, the layout did not address the needs for Illuminate SF to take off and be successful. Creating a new website required website best practices, SEO, analytics implementation, and understanding how the platform worked.
Finally, after all the details come together, a media package would be created and sent to media partners. This was important to reach the masses and generate interest through local and travel media outlets.With our roadmap line out, we began implementing.
Implementation of Strategy:
First step: Identify and write the content
Content with Illuminate SF started with thinking about the visitors and potential questions they would have. Installation content covered fundamental information like where they’re located, who the installation was created by, and what it represents. This content format would eventually serve as the template for all installations, new and old. Eventually, information from this content would be repurposed to create overview content that served the overall SF Travel content strategy.
Tour guide content outlined the different neighborhood tours offered throughout the Festival of Light. Creating this content required working with artists and guides, SFT partners for travel and biking logistics, and recruiting volunteers.
We identified local writers who understood the subject well and the importance of light art. Additionally, we reviewed brand voice, positioning, and value propositions to create content that resonated with the most niche art fans to the general public.
Second Step: Website magic
The bulk of the project was creating an aesthetic digital environment for everything Illuminate SF to live. Partnering with Storied.co, a brand storytelling platform, it was important to understand all the information and content we needed before creating the website. It was also important to understand website fundamentals, such as basic web design, HTML/CSS, and demand generation tactics.
From a design and branding perspective, the goal of the website was to be nimble and easy to navigate through. The basic structure of the website addressed accessible fundamental information, like who the artists are, where the installations are located, and what the installations were about. Any information regarding Illuminate SF would exist in the hamburger menu, which is a standard navigational tool for both desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.
As with most art, it is easier for the installation to do all the talking. Therefore, eye-opening installation pages were a must with the respective installation in the background and a description appearing once the user scrolls down. It was a seamless and understandable way to consume the content whether viewing from a desktop or mobile device.
The homepage was an important aspect of the website, if not the most important because we wanted to reflect an experience open to everyone, especially people landing on the page for the first time. Instead of a static hero image, visitors landing on the homepage were greeted by a looping hero video, highlighting some of the Festival of Light’s most memorable moments to incite excitement.
Third Step: Organizing tour experiences
Weekly tours were offered starting from Thanksgiving Day to the last day of the year. In its first conception, tours were offered through Eventbrite sign-ups. Each experience showcased light art experiences in Yerba Buena/SoMa, Embarcadero/North Beach, Central Market/Civic Center, and Bayview/Dogpatch. The tours included bus or bike rentals for easy transportation to and from installations. Additionally, each tour was created as a self-guided itinerary for those interested in going on their own pace.
Results:
The results of our work were enlightening and encouraging. We achieved over 700% increase in web visitation after the first year, then another 500% after the second year, totaling to an increase of 1200% increase in web visits over a two year span. By the end of the second year, we had observed about 40,000 web visits.
The tours were a success and, due to its popularity, were completely sold out within days.
The press made a huge impact to clarify the significance and importance of Illuminate SF. Media partners played a big part in sharing media packages locally and internationally, resulting in syndicated content that worked synonymously in boosting SEO. The LA times raved about the Festival of light, sharing “Sculptures around San Francisco glow with extraordinary energy."
Illuminate SF received International recognition, leading to an invitation to present at a light art conference in Lyon, France. Sadly, this did not happen due to scheduling conflicts.
Concluding Findings:
As mentioned before, there was a choice of using SF Travels’ main website as an environment for IlluminateSF or a dedicated website. The choice to create a dedicated environment was the right choice, but much of the traffic came from SF Travel’s main website because of its superior SEO strategy in place. Because of this, almost 50% of traffic came from the main website, which meant the traffic wasn’t as organic as initially thought. However, as time passed, more syndicated content was created, further boosting Illuminate SF’s SEO ranking.
If you build it, they will come. Although creating a dedicated digital experience for Illuminate SF was more time and resource consuming, the website created a foundation for all things light art in San Francisco. The information would then grow to articles and different types of content, resulting in increased awareness and participation.