Last month we were featured in Net Magazine’s Build off section. The magazine asked three leading designers to mock up an engaging site that will draw in the crowds. We got the following brief:
"Mock up the homepage for a visitor attraction’s website. This can be anything from a mega theme park to a quirky little museum: the choice is yours! The homepage should tempt people to visit the attraction and showcase its main selling points, as well as providing all the informational detail people will be looking for (opening hours, prices, discounts etc). Consider how social media could help to sell the attraction and how best to incorporate it into the site."
I decided to take a different route by making an theme park based around water – we actually have one in Holland: Dutch Water Dreams. I started with a logo, to get a feeling of the style I wanted to use:
The main goal of the website is to engage visitors, sell tickets, supply visitor information and tell the story about the park. The park is all about action and experience so the website needed to reflect that. Its important to grab the attention of the visitor and to tell the story in an easy-to-consume way, people have limited time when browsing so i needed to communicate the message in a few seconds. With use of bold colors and visuals I wanted to get the attention of the visitor so they would get the idea of what the park has to offer. Once I’ve got their attention the story can be told and try to pusuade them into buying a ticket. By using contrasting color for the ticket button I made something that stands out on the website. This will help increasing tickets sales.
I wanted to use Social Media in a clever way, so visitors could tell their friends about the park. So by using social media in a specific way, like Foursquare check-ins on a boat, you can help them tell that story. This would also bring in the aspect of competition because visitors can only earn the rewards on special places. To really take the experience to the next level the site would be build in HTML5 with use of animations, video and great interaction.
The final result:
All in all a great experience and ofcourse really cool to see yourself in Net Magazine! See the design or check out the full article (pdf).
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