Visit Las Vegas - A website redesign increased event booking leads by 60%

Problem

Las Vegas is the world’s #1 meeting destination. But in 2023, event & meeting bookings were trending downward.

I worked with the Visit Las Vegas team on a site-wide strategy to hit top KPIs as we redesigned and overhauled the entire website. There were various goals we designed for, but the #1 priority was to get a user to contact the team. The data showed that if a team member talked with a potential customer, the likelihood of the event being booked was 3x greater than an typical RFP submission — ultimately tripling potential bookings and business in Las Vegas.

Role: UX Design Lead (UX strategy, UI direction, stakeholder presentations, project management)

Solving the problem started with dissecting the Event Planner user journey

I identified and broke down the key points (stages 3 & 4 below) in the user journey where they are most likely to seek information or engage with a team member. I made sure to focus on the information the users needed at these stages and plant strategic placements of getting in touch with the Vegas team as well as resources they will need from Vegas team members.

Stage 3: Exploring. “I can explore the possibilities.”

Stage 4: Narrowing. “I can confidently narrow to find the right fit.”

A graphic showing four stages of a Meeting Planner's journey

Where do the do the lead gen CTAs sit in the site structure and UI?

The website needed to provide comprehensive information across all pages to support every stage of the meeting planner’s journey. This included details on venue spaces, incentives, hotel bookings, and off-site activities for attendees. But stages 3 and 4 were critical, as they marked the points where the website and team member interactions occurred.

To accomplish boosting the the booking lead, the website required:

  • Strategic call-to-action placements in key locations to encourage team contact.

  • Seamless contact: Reaching out to a team member had to be effortless, with no barriers.

  • Easy filtering: Users needed to quickly find the correct team member for their specific event type.

  • Personalized engagement: Team members needed to be presented as approachable and personable, encouraging meeting planners to connect with them.

Nav placement

  • Key location, always available, easy discoverability

  • Use brand blue strategically to call attention

  • Personalized, friendly language ( “We’d love to speak with you directly” vs passive “Contact the team” button

Bridged the gap between venue pages and contacting the venue’s designated team member.

  • Placed personalized team members contacts onto their respective venue pages (vs only having the team members on an About The Team page in a separate location.)

  • Created droppable, modular contacts widget that can be placed on any page

  • Enforced ease of discoverability and usability for user

The Vegas team is robust - how can a user easily find the team member they need?

An easy way for a planner to find which team member they needed to contact by filtering by industry and sales region. The Visit Las Vegas sales team is very robust with multiple departments based on industry and location. A meeting planner has the option of over two dozen Las Vegas team members to decipher and choose from. In collaboration with our lead developers, we created a comprehensive contacts list that is filterable by industry, type of event, and geographical location. It also offers pop up for bio and contact info.

What didn’t work…

User testing showed that the planned sticky button that sat directly under the menu needed to be removed. This was intended as another prominent opportunity for a user to contact the team by clicking the button and heading to the comprehensive team page. However, 100% of users tested thought this was a chat bot due to the speech bubble icon and it’s sticky placement on the right side of the screen. We ended up removing the button altogether and replaced with droppable widgets.

Results

The optimized strategies and placements effectively boosted the top KPI of contacting the team, leading to a 60% increase in user inquiries via phone or email in one year from launch.

40%+ increase in the team being contacted by email.
20% increase in the team being contacted by phone.

dotComm Awards, Gold:  Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, B2B Website