Tom Wilson

Website Redesign

This is what Bahamas.com's home page looked like when my team and I were tasked with saving the business. While clean, it lacked passion and human connection to the islands. 

We added color and visual interest back to the page. Traffic increased by more than 30% and average time spent on the site went from less than two minutes to over six minutes per visit. Best of all, when every other Caribbean destination had business decrease by over 50%, we were able to help Bahamas Tourism revenue to remain flat.

This gallery shows the flash intro we put on the homepage. It started with the petals of the archipelago created by Duffy Design floating into place to form the logo. The petals then spread out and transformed into the islands they represent. The island names and globe appeared. Each island on the map was clickable and would bring up a short video.

In addition to making design look better, we added a trip wizard tool to help users plan their Bahamas vacation. They had two ways in: a quiz that would match them to their perfect island getaway or a visually simple trip planner if they knew what they were looking for. The results page gave them recommended lodging, activities and even deals that were available. For people who booked travel, this section was used by over 80% of them.

OOH

We focused what little outdoor budget on tactics that would get noticed and are memorable. These spectaculars were in the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area. Locals called police repeatedly thinking there were actual people on top of the billboards.

PRINT

The Bahamas focused on vertical markets pretty heavily so we would create print ads that went into trade publications or magazines that primarily catered to that vertical market.

The Bahamas were a huge destination for religious conventions and retreats. 

Due to its proximity to the US, The Bahamas was a favorite getaway for amateur pilots and small aircraft companies.

During the recession, The Bahamas was the perfect answer for travelers wanting an exotic trip without a huge price tag.

Destination weddings were huge at the time and The Bahamas were a great option if you wanted your family there with you.

ONLINE PROMOTION

To help spark bookings, we created The Bahamas Bridal Bailout. This online contest gave away 5 destination weddings to The Bahamas for the winning couple and eight guests. It was a user-generated content contest where entrants would create videos or submit essays as to why they deserved to get married in The Bahamas. If someone didn't want to enter, a $1450 package was offered that included most of what the prize winners received. The response was tremendous with over 1,500 entries and more than 25,000 votes cast. Since we built the site, we were able to easily re-skin it for any other UGC contests.