Sentosa

Background

With an abundance of island developments such as Songs of the Sea, Sentosa Express, Sentosa Cove and Resorts World, Sentosa needed to reposition itself in order to truly capture the leisure and lifestyle experiences on offer. It was no longer enough to be ‘Singapore’s Resort Island’.

Following two consecutive wins in the ‘Asian Attractions – Large’ category at the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions Asia (IAAPA Asia) Awards, Sentosa launched a new brand proposition of ‘Asia’s Favourite Playground’ in October 2008. This proposition was deemed the perfect platform to launch Sentosa onto a global stage and fulfil their aim of becoming Asia’s leading lifestyle and leisure destination by 2010.

Challenge

The existing Sentosa brand site was revamped in 2005 and had not changed since. It was seen as fairly static, with too much information and too little interactivity. What’s more, the overall design and delivery of information no longer sat well with Sentosa’s new brand positioning, and there was an absence of a proper content management system to easily update the site in the event of new openings and promotions.

Solution

• Redesigned brand site with improved interactivity, using the Sentosa map as a central point of navigation and to provide snapshot information.
• First-time and potential visitors navigate through the island using the illustrated interactive map, gaining a visual representation of what to expect when they are physically on the island.
• Repeat visitors able to use the main navigation to go directly to specific information.
• Subpages redesigned with scaled down ‘bite-size’ content.
• User-generated content put in place to allow visitors to share photos, videos and experiences.
• Built on a CMS (Ektron) that allows Sentosa to easily update the site.

Result

BLUE delivered a technical architecture and CMS implementation that allows for scalability and flexibility of use. This gives Sentosa the freedom to manage their own content while still enjoying a highly dynamic and interactive website. The newly revamped site is also now in line with Sentosa’s brand guidelines and proposition.

The site went live in July 2010, with metrics taken later that same month already indicating a pages-per-visit increase of 13.66%, average time-on-site increase of 29%, and bounce rate reduction of 17.2%.