A new website to elevate positioning
Combining function with style at Lakeside Shopping Centre.
The Problem
Lakeside Shopping Centre in Essex forms one of the largest shopping areas in a single location within Europe and is home to over 300 shops, restaurants and leisure attractions, including brands like Apple, Zara, MAC, Puttshack & Hollywood Bowl. We wanted to ensure that a new website for Lakeside would elevate the centre’s positioning - challenging its main rival, Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent, just across the River Thames. As part of the brief, the client tasked us to create a website that would increase email subscribers and dwell time in Lakeside, improve the visibility of services offered by the centre, and to make it easier for users to find key information.
The Solution
A streamlined, efficient and engaging website was created using our off-the-shelf digital place marketing solution, DestinationCore Pro. This was the ideal platform to use because the client wanted to bring to life the unique brand personality of the destination but still required industry specific functionality (such as the brand carousel and business directory).
Their previous website was predominantly used for accessing ‘functional’ information by visitors (top pages included opening times, store directory and vacancies) so key consideration was needed as to how this could seamlessly integrate with a more visually appealing design.
It was imperative to not lose sight of Lakeside’s current user experience – visitors have always wanted functional information elements at their fingertips. Surfacing service information for the user (opening times and key centre information) is front and centre on the home page. However, we also knew that bringing events to the fore would lead to longer time on site and therefore translate to longer dwell time at the centre. Our homepage design achieved a perfect balance.
The new site has a mobile-first approach so that the users on the go can access retailer information easily and have advanced filter options. This was achieved by re-ordering the hierarchy of information when the site is displayed on a mobile device.
Lakeside has such a broad range of brands and activities, the visitor is spoilt for choice – to make for easy searching, a personalisation filter based on the user’s intention (entertainment, day out, quick shop, bite to eat, etc.) has been utilised across the site.
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