Visit California

Visitor context

The new visitcalifornia.com focuses on the unique value a statewide tourism organization provides—providing context for what a visitor can experience throughout the state and creating excitement for a California vacation.

Inspired consumers are then directed to local DMO (Destination Marketing Organization) sites and best-in-class third-party sites to complete the planning and booking process.

The modular design system shifts the focus away from an overwhelming and exhaustive content approach towards a highly curated, "less is more" model. Content can exist in multiple places as single editorial units on any page, including:

Region pages

Region pages introduce the twelve key regions of California and showcase the diverse geography of each. Each region page serves up important information like the high & low temperatures of the current season and contextual content including key destinations, curated trips, events, and special features.

Destination Pages

A destination page offers a more granular view into a destination, like the attractions, activities, and weather. Each page element is socially shareable, and visitors are invited to browse through additional content like videos and photos, or click through to a partner site for more details.

Special Features

Special features are curated lists of attractions that bring California's color to life—like the state’s top five surf spots.

Events

Event pages allow Visit California’s website editors to feature both single and multi-day events in their region.

The new platform was designed to be a source of inspiration to potential visitors, and to ultimately drive travel to the Golden State.

The user experience on the site fosters discovery through its flexible structure and responsive design. For example:

Endless discovery.Long scrolling pages with cinematic blocks of photography and editorial allowed the Visit California team more flexibility and control to produce, package, and arrange every type of content.

A clear path to discover more.Recognizing how travel seekers search for information, the design treats article pages as entry points that are as valuable as the homepage. Visitors are presented with clear paths to discover more content, and there are no dead ends.

Completely responsive.Recognizing how travelers seek information across multiple devices, visitors to the site now enjoy the same high-quality browsing experience on their desktop at home as they get on a phone or tablet.