The Whakatāne District’s tourism website, www.whakatane.com, has undergone a significant redevelopment. The new version of the website launched today.

Following on from the redevelopment of the Whakatāne District Council’s website in December 2013 and the Whakatāne Museum’s website in April 2014, whakatane.com features a completely overhauled, modern graphic design that responsively adapts to any device.

“Nearly half of all visitors to the tourism website are using tablets or smartphones,” says Julian Reweti, Whakatāne District Council General Manager Community and Economic Development. “The previous version of the website didn’t offer an optimal experience to mobile device users, so we have rebuilt it from the ground up, with that audience firmly in mind.”

The new website includes tools that allow potential visitors to filter activities by interest, the number of people to be involved, and their available budget. Fully interactive maps allow website users to easily locate activities, accommodation, restaurants, and much more. “The new tourism website also puts much greater focus on Ōhope Beach and the southern parts of our District, such as the Whirinaki Forest and Te Urewera,” Mr Reweti says. “Ōhope Beach is the Whakatāne District’s number one attraction for domestic tourism, so naturally, that’s front and centre on the site.”

Improvements and refinements to the new tourism website will be ongoing over the coming months, including the roll-out of a ‘Live and Invest’ section as a means of encouraging economic development in the District.

Development of the redesigned website was a joint project between District Council staff and Klixo, a locally-based website services provider. Council staff performed all planning and design work in-house, while Klixo took on the website development. “We’ve partnered with Klixo for all of our recent website projects and they’ve consistently delivered stellar results,” Mr Reweti adds.

Utilising existing website redesign assets and making use of internal staff resources allowed the whakatane.com redevelopment to be completed within the Council’s operating budget. “We’ve significantly overhauled all of the Council’s websites in less than a year, and the fact that we’ve been able to do so without any capital expenditure is a huge achievement,” Mr Reweti concludes.