Project update | how do we do this?
Engaging and authentic content with immersive mixed media (images and video)
Content is a big part of this development, with refreshed content for accommodation, food and drink, nature and outdoors, events, active and outdoors, and break types published.
Our homepage hero video changes with the seasons, capturing the feeling of experiencing Scotland in the moment.
There’s increased use of user generated content (UGC) across the website, with further exploration underway to scale this activity, recognising UGC as key to bringing greater authenticity to the website.
We’re also improving the overall design, which will deliver a better user experience and greater efficiency in delivering our websites.
Favourites feature
A new feature has gone live that allows users to save their favourite content to their own favourites page. We're still working on our translated versions. Users to the website are able to select "add to favourites" and view it on their list using the "my favourites" option from the purple bar at the top of any page. Take a look on visitscotland.com.
First person itineraries
We’ve been testing the first version of our new itinerary template and are currently identifying priority improvements from our next version. All of this will be worked on soon.
Experience-led site search
In February, we launched an improved sitewide search to make it easier for visitors to find inspiration and practical information, including events and tours. Built around experience-led categories and intuitive text search, it supports the exploration of trip ideas.
The enhanced search now draws results from our own site content, filtering events by location, live feed of events, and tours, with further usability improvements coming soon.
As part of this update, we retired the previous search function and product and accommodation listings. This supports our renewed focus on early-stage inspiration and planning, informed by customer journey research and shared with industry partners.
Google Maps integration
In January, we launched the first version of our new interactive map, powered by Google Maps Platform. It helps visitors find tourism businesses and points of interest using search, filters, and interactive map features, with direct links to Google Maps, business websites, and booking platforms.
Our focus is now on improving the initial view of the map, making destinations visible up front to encourage exploration. We’re also improving how our map search works, so that users can search the whole of Scotland regardless of where they are zoomed in to.
