User Experience is the Destination
St. Louis welcomes approximately 24 million annual visitors who spend approximately $6 billion and provide jobs for 90,000 residents. The St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission (DBA Explore St. Louis) is the official destination marketing organization responsible for selling St. Louis City and County as a convention, meeting, and leisure destination as well as the operator of the America’s Center Convention Complex and The Dome. Explore St. Louis works to attract citywide conventions, one-hotel meetings, sporting events, concerts, group tours, and individual leisure travelers to St. Louis in collaboration with more than 900 regional Partners including hotels, restaurants, attractions, and service providers.
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The Problem
Creating a Modern Web Presence for a Niche Market Leader
Integrity launched the Explore St. Louis website in 2018. Thanks to Integrity’s robust maintenance and support program, coupled with Explore St. Louis’ strong content strategy and support, the site had a long shelf life. As the organization grew, however, the website no longer reflected the full scope of their offerings. By 2023, the site architecture was outdated, lacked key content categories, and failed to deliver a best-in-class user experience. It was also penalized by Google for poor mobile performance since new devices and upgraded operating systems had emerged since the original launch.
The goal for the new website was to engage users with fresh, compelling content that was well-organized and easy to search. The challenge lay in the site’s massive scale: it needed to showcase why St. Louis is a great place to visit, live, work, and play, while providing intuitive ways to filter through 900 partners and highlight the city’s unique neighborhoods. At the same time, the site had to serve multiple audiences—visitors, meeting and convention planners, and reunion organizers—while also promoting events at America’s Center and The Dome.
“Integrity’s approach to enhancing our digital presence perfectly aligned with our goals. They didn’t just build a website; they captured the essence of what St. Louis and Explore St. Louis are all about.”
— Brian Hall, Chief Marketing Officer
The Solution
A Complete Website Redesign that Enhances User Experience
Integrity partnered with Explore St. Louis to clearly define project goals and requirements, while also auditing other travel and tourism websites in comparable cities. A primary focus was redesigning the architecture to organize a high volume of content for multiple audiences. Tagging, categorization, filters and sorting options were thoroughly evaluated, leading to a logical hierarchy and intuitive navigation presented in a new sitemap. The design adopted a minimalist approach with bold typography, vibrant colors, microinteractions, high-quality imagery, and video. And, because Explore St. Louis is funded by hotel and motel taxes as well as rents and revenues from America’s Center, significant attention was dedicated to accessibility compliance in order to achieve an AAA rating from the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.
On the development side, the team integrated a third-party API containing partner records and transformed that data to automatically populate the website. Dynamic front-end sorting and filtering were implemented using Search and Filter Pro, along with a custom geolocation solution. Content blocks were built with a combination of Advanced Custom Fields and custom WordPress Gutenberg blocks, allowing Explore St. Louis to easily add new content and categories over time. A map feature was also developed to showcase neighborhood information.
The final phase was quality assurance. A dedicated QA team tested the site across multiple browsers and devices within a staging environment. Once testing was complete, a fresh staging site was delivered to Explore St. Louis for final review and approval.
The Result: A Modern, User-Friendly Gateway To St. Louis
With a clean modern design, intuitive navigation, and a focus on user experience, the website now effectively showcases the vibrancy and diversity of St. Louis.