22 Well Done State Tourism Websites – From the Build Internet! blog of Sam and Zach Dunn, a look at 22 ‘well done’ state tourism websites. As many of you know we had own our informal and unscientific poll to determine the best travel website…the Great Travel Site Showdown…which Virginia won. Stay tuned for the Great Travel Site Showdown 2009. Anyway, a good post from Sam on the commonalities of tourism websites. Of course, each of us have our own goals and objectives, but seeing 22 state tourism sites on a single page does reveal the similarities of the designs.
Sam’s comments / themes for the sites:
- JQuery or Flash animated headers
- Large image backgrounds
- Image intensive layouts
- Good white space, not too cramped
- Distinct accent colors
And his list:
- Ohio
- Utah
- Rhode Island
- Pennsylvania
- New Hampshire
- Idaho
- Tennessee
- Wisconsin
- Washington
- Maine
- Oregon
- North Dakota
- South Dakota
- Illinois
- Missouri
- Texas
- Virginia
- Georgia
- Massachusetts
- New York
- Kentucky
- Hawaii
We cannot argue with that list. All of those 22 sites have a similar look and feel to them which is very pleasing ascetically. However, the real answer to the ‘is my website successful’ question, is looking at your statistics and analytics to determine if you site design is accessible, easy and useful. Of course, a nice design never hurt.
http://buildinternet.com/
State Tourism Logos – While writing for the post above, we came across another post from Sam, this time on the 50 state tourism logos. Again, a great look at all of the logos side by side. And be sure to read the comments section, some good thoughts in there as well.
Sam’s comments / discussion topics:
- Best/Worst Designs
- Most Fitting/Inappropriate
- What was Kansas thinking?
- Any additional thoughts, feelings, or concerns. Dreams too.
Sorry Kansas.
Favorites seem to be Georgia, Oregon and Kentucky. Which, in the case of Kentucky, spent a lot of time and energy developing the logo and brand behind the logo, prior to launch. Kudos Kentucky.
See their PowerPoint presentation on the branding effort:
So, off the record, which one of us has the worst logo?
http://buildinternet.com/
Twitter Age – Speaking of informal and unscientific polls, Twitter user @TheBusyBrain is currently conducting a quick poll to determine the demographic age of Twitter users. Again, completely unscientific, but still, interesting…so far, 64% of respondents (Twitter users) are between the ages of 30-59. We won’t jump to any conclusions, but that is an encouraging stat on the adoption of these ’social media tools’ among anyone over the age of 23.
Current results:
If you are a Twitter user, what is your age bracket?
30 – 39 years (33%, 473 Votes)
20 – 29 years (28%, 401 Votes)
40 – 49 years (21%, 304 Votes)
50 – 59 years (10%, 147 Votes)
16 – 19 years (5%, 67 Votes)
60 – 69 years (2%, 23 Votes)
10 – 15 years (1%, 13 Votes)
80+ years (0%, 7 Votes)
70 – 79 years (0%, 6 Votes)Total Voters: 1,441
2 Comments
January 9, 2009 at 11:29 am
The logo discussion is an interesting one. Unless you’re a “Nike”, “Starbucks” or “McDonalds” and have the budget to sustain an awareness campaign, your logo is just one aspect of who you are and what you represent.
While I am proud of our logo and am glad we’re among the “favorites” the DNA of our brand is much more than a logo. It’s the content…both the words and pictures, the design environment and most importantly the message and emotion it evokes in the reader/user.
In fact, if you look at the full portfolio of our products, you’ll often find that the Travel Oregon logo is often understated and relegated to footers and/or the credits.
March 18, 2009 at 7:47 pm
absolutely loved finding your story, magnificent job – keep it up!