Enhanced interactive experience awaits National Forest visitors with launch of new ‘visit and explore’ website
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
The National Forest Company has just launched a new visitor website providing an enhanced interactive experience to visitors looking for tourism information in the area.
There has always been loads to see and do in The National Forest, and the new site provides visitors with a comprehensive set of online tools that enable them to explore the area and to make the most of their time in The National Forest.
Aiming to help visitors plan their days out and short breaks in The National Forest, the site is centred around a new interactive map that displays the location of attractions, events, places to stay and places to eat in the greater area of The National Forest.
The interactive mapping application offers a compelling visual experience that allows visitors to explore the area and locate places and events of interest with ease. Featuring the familiar Google Maps interface, it is very intuitive and easy to use allowing users to move freely around the map, zooming in and out at will.
Over 600 Points of Interest are overlaid on the map in real time, grouped into clusters where one area contains multiple locations for ease of reference.
The map keeps the visitor's location in memory, so if one finds an activity or attraction of interest, they can quickly and easily find places to stay, events and food & drink establishments in the immediate area. This also enables users to return to their place on the map after viewing the details of a record.
Any website is as good as the information it contains, and even more so in the case of tourism information sites. However, keeping up to date a site with the wealth of information that The National Forest offers is a challenge to be reckoned with.
To ease the challenge of keeping information fresh and relevant the new National Forest visitor site provides special tools and sections that allow local businesses and industry, as well as event organisers, to directly contribute and maintain content on the site.
Furthermore, the site provides a flexible platform on which additional features can be bolted on as required to ensure that it always provides a great user experience.
Designed and developed by Cyber Media in close collaboration with The National Forest team, every detail of the new site, every tab, link, icon, image and pixel was customised to achieve a unique look and feel that captures and reflects the essence of The National Forest itself.
Neil Lovell, Cyber Media's Creative Director, said: "We brought a lot of innovative ideas to the table during development, and are really proud of the result."
To explore the new National Forest Visit website follow:
The website development was a complex project involving the re-design of both the website that visitors see and the database ‘back-end’ that contains more than 600 individual site records.
We worked closely with Cyber Media and are delighted with the end result! The site is easy to use, containing information on places to visit, where to stay, events to attend and much more. It will help visitors plan their days out and short breaks in The National Forest and we believe will contribute to bringing more visitors to our destination.
Penny Wilkinson
Tourism & Promotions Officer
National Forest Company
