The Lodge at Deadwood Launches New Website
On January 6, 2016, the Lodge at Deadwood Gaming Resort in the Black Hills of South Dakota launched www.deadwoodlodge.com—version 2.0. It features beautiful video of the property, a mobile-friendly responsive design, descriptive copy, and updated site navigation.
The Lodge at Deadwood opened its doors in winter 2009. At that time, they also launched their first website. Now, over 6 years later, guests are expecting even more from hotels before they walk in the door. It was time for a new website.
The design and layout focus on highlighting the beauty of the location, as well as the quality of the property. Videos were important as well. Extra care was taken to integrate them in key locations throughout the website content.
James Krueger, partner and Regency account manager at Click Rain
A Click Rain videographer spent a day on-site capturing aerial footage of the property with a drone. He also filmed the hotel, casino, restaurants, and conference center. The end result: four unique, short videos—one for each main page of the new website. Now users can watch videos to get a feel for each aspect of the Lodge.
Increasing site speed and delivering a user-friendly mobile experience were top priorities as well.
"Many travelers are using browsers on their mobile devices to research hotels," said Krueger. "Plus, we knew that local residents use the site to learn more about the casino and restaurant, and internet can be spotty in the Black Hills. Our team kept this top of mind and moved the site to a new host, so it is much faster." The new site also uses responsive design best practices, improving the mobile user's ability to find and consume content.