In the heart of Nottingham
Nottingham is consistently ranked as one of the best shopping destinations in the UK. With over 120 of those shops located in the Victoria Centre, they needed a website that reflected their premier status.
The Problem
Early in 2021, the Victoria Centre had a number of challenges that they needed to overcome; how could they encourage visitors back to the centre post-COVID? How could they attract more affluent customers from wider surrounding area without alienating the local audience? And how could they position the centre as ‘the destination in the East Midlands to go shopping’? Over three million people live within a 45-minute drive of the centre and with competition from Derby, Birmingham, Meadowhall and Leicester – why should they choose Nottingham and the Victoria Centre above the rest?
The Solution
Working closely with Jacob Bailey and the DestinationCore team, the Victoria Centre team needed their new website to be exciting, enticing and encouraging.
Our off-the-shelf digital place marketing solution, DestinationCore Pro, was selected as the client required an individually branded approach whilst still wanting to benefit from destination specific features.
The visual styling of the website was incredibly important, both to affirm the brand position of the shopping centre as an aspirational destination, and to reflect the current brand style by encompassing clean lines, white space and engaging imagery.
Our audit of the previous site revealed that we needed to highlight the Victoria Centre as a shopping centre and focus on the functional side of the website, for example the directory and store opening times. This information is now front and centre on the main site so it can’t be missed. It is also supported by the business directory, with global categories which allow content to be grouped into 'interest types' to encourage users to discover and do more.
Understanding that the website would be used by visitors planning a visit – more likely on a desktop – and by users visiting the website ‘on the ground’ during their visit was going to be imperative to creating a successful user experience. The DC Pro platform allows for displaying a different hierarchy of information depending on the user's device.
The new user-centric site now brings together store, leisure and restaurant listings, services information, competitions, offers and news from across the centre in an engaging and cohesive way.
If you're looking to design and develop a new website, contact us today. Let's do something brilliant together.
