Revitalized Web Experience Helps Residents Discover Their Next Adventure
Client
Metro Parks TacomaAbout
Metro Parks Tacoma is a nationally-accredited and award-winning park district in Tacoma, Washington. The system comprises 80 parks and recreation properties, 46 playgrounds, nearly 3,000 total park acres, and unique attractions including Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium and Northwest Trek Wildlife Park.
The Challenge
Metro Parks Tacoma needed a website that supported its mission of inspiring our community and achieving equity in our parks, its programs and services through community engagement. The forefront of this project was making a responsive website that was easy for visitors to view and register for programs from mobile devices.
Data Informs Design
A huge benefit of our long-time partnership with Metro Parks Tacoma was the amount of data we were able to use when we started this project. The data was valuable because it helped our team map out events and analyze information from the existing website. Additionally, we conducted surveys, baseline testing, and goal-setting workshops to better understand how we could improve navigation and design.
Optimizing Third-Party Integration for Mobile
One of the largest efforts of this project was integrating with ActiveNet, a third-party registration system. The existing setup was difficult to use on mobile devices and prevented users from viewing and registering for programs, costing Metro Parks valuable revenue. By connecting ActiveNet with WordPress, the Metro Parks team could manage events in a single system. Now, residents can easily view program information and then go directly to registration — from any device.
Insights Power Updates
Was this page helpful? For Metro Parks Tacoma, this simple question turned into powerful results. Data from Sitka Insights, our software that blends search, feedback collector, alerts and content inventory, revealed that people were struggling to find details about activities. These insights informed a simple yet powerful website update: placing Activities & Sports in the navigation at the top of the page so website visitors knew exactly where to look for the information they needed.
