Case Study: Colusa Casino Website

The Challenge

Colusa Casino and Hotel of Colusa, CA needed to advance their online presence from a static, brochure-type website to a far more interactive tool to engage visitors and drive visits. They wanted to enhance their content regarding the casino, players club, dining, promotions, entertainment, hotel (plus a reservations widget), spa, outdoor adventures amenity and tribe. They also wanted an effective content management system to update the site on a timely basis, create a players blog and also use the site to capture email addresses.

The Solution

Colusa engaged Wright Casino Marketing to develop and redesign the site from the ground up. We started with a full discovery process of the casino’s amenities, marketing strategy, target market, competition, current marketing initiatives and more. A strategy was identified to focus on the casino’s staff/service and recent property enhancements. The creative strategy was to create a cleaner look and feel to showcase the casino and staff as well as support the key positioning statement: “It’s A New day and It’s Still All About You.” Several design concepts were developed along with a comprehensive site map, outlining the functionality and micro-sites required to meet the casino’s objectives.

The Result

The new dynamic and attractive site showcasing the casino staff was launched in mid-June, 2009 with resounding success, as the analytics below show. From an average of about 700 visitors a week, the new site attracted 1,400 the first week. Since then, the site has averaged about 3 times the old site’s visitors.


Here’s additional data that compares a two month period with the old site to two months of the new site:

  • Pages/visit and time on site is up 167%. Visitors are finding what they need and looking around while they do.
  • Page Views – up nearly 400%
  • Number of pages visited – up 86%
  • Bounce rate – dropped from 51% to 23%
  • Time on site has more than doubled to 104%
  • New visits percentage has dropped, but in this case, that’s a definite good thing. Combined with the lower bounce rate we can infer that people are returning to the site in larger numbers because they see value there.
  • Content-wise, 20% of site traffic is to gaming-related pages, 20% is going to entertainment related pages, and about 22% is going to the calendar in one form or another. In aggregate, more than half of the site’s traffic is going to pages that are related to direct revenue channels for the casino.


“One of the best decisions our Marketing Department made this year was to do business with Wright Casino Marketing. Not only did they design an unbelievable website for us that is delivering the results we hoped for but they also assisted us in renovating one of our most strategic direct mail campaigns. It’s a pleasure working with everyone on the Wright Casino Marketing team—not only do they do excellent work but they are great people and a lot of fun to interact with!”

Sean McGowan
Marketing Director
Colusa Casino Resort
 

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