The Athens Convention and Visitors Bureau has completely redesigned its website www.VisitAthensGA.com to give it the fresh and functional feel that users have come to expect. With user experience the top priority, the new website design allows visitors to access information when/wherever they want it and local Athens hospitality partners to easily manage their own content. The new website will allow the Athens CVB to continue to promote the city of Athens as a destination of choice in the most effective way possible.

When users access the site, they are able to see that the new website has a completely new feel. The design team planned the website with the city of Athens in mind. Everything from the banner images to background textures to fonts were chosen to reflect Athens' position among the top college towns in America.  An early visitor to the new website remarked, "I compared VisitAthensGA.com to websites of a few other college towns and this was fresher, more colorful and more enticing. It made me think of the town as more than a college town; it had the look of a vacation destination website."

The new website is organized in a way that makes the most sense and with the user experience in mind. Content, imagery and navigation are designed to be inspirational by providing ideas for Athens experiences. Even those who do not know exactly what they are looking for will be able to navigate the pages with ease. As the user scrolls down the page, their screen will fill with a variety of events so that tourists of all kinds will be targeted in one way or another.

The new VisitAthensGA.com now offers Responsive Web Design, which automatically adjusts content for an optimal viewing and interaction experience across a wide range of devices, including desktop, tablet and mobile phone.

Simpleview, a tourism industry leader with over 350 CVB clients, had the task of redesigning the website. The website is completely integrated with the Athens CVB's Customer Relations Management system, meaning all the CVB's sales, marketing and consumer activities can be aligned, tracked and measured. The Athens CVB's website license agreement with Simpleview will provide the Athens CVB with regular upgrades as they are pushed live to leading CVBs across North America and internationally.

Local Athens hospitality industry partners reap some of the biggest benefits of the new website. Local partners can individually access the website to update their own content, events, promotions, and personally review website performance.

A Website and Extranet Workshop is scheduled on October 22 for local hospitality partners interested in making full use of the new website to further promote their business or organization. Those interested in attending should contact Hannah Smith, Director of Marketing & Communications, at [email protected].