Visit Arundel – The Rebuild
Who we are
As you may know, Visit Arundel “the Arundel website” (formerly “Arundel.org.uk”), is a family business, run by Ash and Eloise Kent, Barb Hogan (Sales/Marketing) and Katherine Hogan (Admin and Social Media), Barb is Ash’s aunt and Katherine Ash’s cousin. We have owned and run the website for 16 years, and have lived in Arundel all our lives.
Last year we announced a rebuild of Visit Arundel. We worked with the Arundel Project and took on board resident feedback from the Love Arundel listening sessions. This research helped us make the decision to ‘split’ the website, focusing Visit Arundel towards local, national and international visitors. Love Arundel is focused on the local community and surrounding areas for those who live, work and socialise in Arundel.
The New Site
We started the rebuild process a year ago, with data collection and benchmarking against many other sites. In Autumn 2019, we put the website out to tender. We chose Karl from Simplified Ideas. Karl started work in early January and being based in Arundel has a very good understanding of the town.
The website is a huge undertaking as it covers the whole of Arundel and surrounding areas, with some 500+ listings.
Features of the new website:
✓ Business login
The most exciting part of the new website is allowing you, our advertisers, access into your own listings to edit descriptions, add new photos, upload jobs, special offers and events.
✓ Analytics
In your account dashboard, you can see details on how many times your listing has been viewed. This can help to see if you need to make any edits to your listing to gain more views.
✓ Jobs and Volunteer opportunities
Looking to fill a new position? Upload your own jobs and volunteer opportunities to the Love Arundel website, reaching the local community. We also share these onto Facebook in the Arundel Noticeboard.
✓ Special Offers and Promotions
Season tickets, resident discounts or visitor promotions and special offers, upload your own special offers to the website and choose your audience, local, visitors or both.
✓ Events
Upload your event through your dashboard and it will appear on our popular What’s On calendar. We now have one for visitor events and one for more community-based events, and even a town meetings diary too!
✓ News & Blog
We have a news and blogs highlight on both sites for relevant news and blogs. Please send them to us and we can help make them user friendly for the websites.
Listing options to choose from
Design and Functionality
As well as the above there are more exciting changes to the new site, which have come out of consultation with residents and benchmarking of other towns/cities visitor sites:
- Firstly, the new website is content rich with lots of images, videos and copy
- We have moved away from banner adverts on the website and introduced more native ads and advertorial giving a much cleaner look for the user
- We are massively increasing the functionality and usability of our website, allowing the user to stay engaged longer and find the correct information quicker
- The events calendars are easier to view and more functional for advertisers.
- There are lots of new features within the listings such as video, more images, text, facilities/amenities, social media links, and opening hours
Now it's over to you...
You will all retain the equivalent listings at present which you currently pay for until your subscription is due for renewal.
Get familiar with the site and try the functionality. The more you use the website, edit your listing, adding JONEs (jobs, special offers, news, events), the more views you’ll receive. Help us to help you!
TAKE CONTROL
Firstly, and most importantly we need you to take control of your listing, sign in, change password, check listing(s) and upload new images and text if required, contact Eloise if you are unsure of your login eloise@arundel.org.uk
SOCIAL MEDIA
Tag and Follow us @visitarundel #visitarundel FACEBOOK INSTAGRAM
BACKLINK
Make sure you have a backlink to Visit Arundel / Love Arundel on your website
https://www.visitarundel.co.uk/
OFFERS
If you offer any special offers/season tickets, please add them to our new section dedicated to this.
HERE’S HOW: Login > go to the login menu > ‘Add a listing’ > ‘Special Offer’
JOBS AND VOLUNTEERS
If you have a Job vacancy or looking for staff, please include them as anyone with a paid listing will be able to do this
HERE’S HOW: Login > go to the login menu > ‘Add a listing’ > ‘Job or Volunteer Opportunity’
EVENTS
Upload your local and virtual events
HERE’S HOW: Login > go to the login menu > ‘Add a listing’ > ‘What’s on’
Any technical problems or queries please email eloise@arundel.org.uk
Our domain is now www.visitarundel.co.uk not Arundel.org or Arundel.org.uk, please ensure backlinks are correct. Our email addresses remain the same.
Love Arundel should be linked as www.lovearundel.org, it will redirect to the Visit Arundel website.
We need your support in order to drive Arundel forward as one, especially in the current situation, remember we are here to help and will be working very hard for you and Arundel as a whole.