Who designed the Lord Howe Island website?

The Strategy

Having worked with the Lord Howe Island Tourism Association for a very long time, we were very excited to get the chance to redesign their website. We knew we had a lot of great assets to work with, the challenge was designing a concept that would showcase the natural beauty of LHI.

We began this project with a Discovery phase to outline the intended objectives of the redesign.

What did we do?

• Discovery + Strategy
• Creative Direction
• Website Design
• Website Development
• Responsive Mobile-Ready
• CMS Customisation
• Speed Optimisation

Discovery

Our discussions with the Client revealed potential opportunities with a new redesign, and assisted us in defining the objectives that would guide a positive outcome. The major elements that were important to the stakeholders were:

• Refresh and modernise the design to improve their brand footprint
• Provide a positive mobile experience
• Make it easy for visitors to discover important information
• Maximize the use of outstanding imagery
• Make it simple for the Client to edit and maintain content on the site

We were tasked with designing a bold modern layout which would inspire the visitor with stunning photography and videos, along with developing the website based on a logical layout system that would be aesthetically appealing to the consumer and would give the Client flexibility when building out new pages into the future.

UX/UI Prototyping

Being a bold and unusual layout, we generated a series of wireframes throughout the UX planning phase, which acted as “blueprints” for the site layout and site architecture, that allowed us to swiftly test concepts to ensure the Client and customer user experience was optimised.

The Style

With this project, we were able to be a little bit more creative and experimental when it came to the design. We were able to create long scrolling pages, mixed with bite-sized nuggets of information – all dominated by the immersive visuals on the page – that all told a story of what it was like to experience the paradise of Lord Howe Island.

We used an ultra-minimal colour palette with subtle gold highlights and utilized clear spacing that creates a engaging flow to content within the site. The new typography combinations are bold and crisp, which evoke the islands casual barefoot appeal.

The Substance

The Lord Howe Island website is intended to be maintained on a regular basis with fresh content. The website is hand-crafted on a very customised WordPress CMS, that allows the client to easily manage content, news, and other important information.

Bringing It All Together

This recent redesign project benefited from having a long close working relationship with the team at the Lord Howe Island Tourism Association. The outcome is that the website has been completely redesigned to provide a better immersive experience for visitors, resulting in an uplift in website traffic and interactions.

What We Loved

Due to the long relationship, we had a lot of freedom to be both visually and technically creative, and challenged ourselves to create a bespoke experience that presents Lord Howe in a captivating way. This led us to a more unique engaging result that we’re very proud of.

What They Loved

Ultimately the presentation of content (the videos, the photos and even the visual design of the words on the page). As a result of our creative strategy, the Lord Howe website experienced a significant increase in visitors on their website, generating a lot of interest, great feedback, and inquiries.