Fusion Workshop create Bath Heritage websites
By Effective Communication
Five new websites have been launched to attract visitors from all around the world to some of Bath’s most popular tourist attractions by Bath and North East Somerset Council.
The websites represent the council’s flagship Roman Baths, Fashion Museum and Victoria Art Gallery, which increasingly use the internet to draw visitors to the city’s tourist hot-spots.
The 12-month project web development specialists Fusion Workshop has also led to the creation of a new website for Bath Record Office and a corporate hospitality site, Heritage Hospitality.
The project enables the council to promote the city’s tourist gems online to both national and international audiences, with the sites available in different languages including English, French German, Spanish and Chinese.
In addition, each of the websites has been redeveloped and made ‘future-proof’ in anticipation of new technological developments that may be just around the corner in the ever changing world of the internet. The sites will then be able to use such technologies without the need for further large scale redevelopments to improve the online experience and make them even more effective in their role.
All this will make the websites far more interactive and the council will be able to consider using far more content generated by the users, from written reviews to photographs.
Having worked with the Bath and North East Somerset Council for the last eight years, Fusion Workshop has already enabled the council’s online visitors to view virtual displays of the museums’ collections and take virtual tours of the exhibition galleries before visiting the attractions themselves. This redevelopment will create an even richer user experience.
Chris Short, Managing Director at Fusion Workshop, said: “We wanted to ensure that Bath & North East Somerset Council remain at the cutting edge in offering accessible, secure and unique online visitor experiences whether they choose to make the journey to Bath or prefer to have their cultural experiences online.
Patricia Dunlop, Commercial Manager of Heritage Services at Bath and North East Somerset Council, said: “It is notable that the previous sites had stood the test of time. However, it is now right to future-proof the sites for the next decade and the ongoing development support from Fusion Workshop will enable us to achieve this.
“The development work will make it easier for staff in different sections of our service to update the sites themselves, rather than relying on one person in the team – which means information will be more accurate and up-to-date.
“Website promotion has become the most important aspect of the marketing mix and we make full use of the e-newsletter functionality to communicate with our growing database of subscribers.
“More recently we have also started incorporating user-generated content into the sites, which we expect to become a big feature in the next few years.”
On selecting Fusion Workshop as a partner, she said: “One of Fusion Workshop’s strengths is their considerable experience of bi-lingual and multi-lingual sites, which is important to us as at least 20% of our visitors have only limited English.
“The Fashion Museum website already exists in four languages and therefore simplicity in uploading and updating content is essential.
“Since the start, Fusion Workshop has shared our commitment to accessible websites and we are delighted that the development will incorporate as standard best practice in accessibility. The new platform even has automatic checks to ensure that the sites continue to be accessible as the content grows.
“We believe this strategy will allow the council to remain a good example to other local authorities and organisations on how heritage, which is so vitally important, can remain accessible and we would welcome them to come see how it has been achieved.”
Tags: Bath and North East Somerset Council, Bath heritage, Chris Short, Fusion Workshop, Patricia Dunlop
