Our company made the strategic decision to shut down the FoundLocally.com community information and directory website in 2019, just before COVID-19. We had decided to focus our resources and efforts on the our very unique TransCanadaHighway.com website to make it even better.
Background
By way of background, by this time, in 2019, we have been working with blog software for a decade, and we have been using WordPress for about 5 years. We also saw the companies adding themselves to our directory (about 10-20 a day) were almost all using WordPress in their websites. We realized that WordPress environment was progressing at an accelerated page and had so many design “themes” and extension “plugins” to create features that used to require custom programming.
From an economic consideration, the hosting environment we were on, using Microsoft SQL Server, Active Server pages, and .Net, was “cludgey” and limited out hosting alternatives, whereas more hosts had simple ad efficient WordPress onboarding solutions. We also had seen over the prior decade that the dominance of Google in the search business, and its growing focus on “local” reduced the uniqueness of the FoundLocally.com search site, and they had spidered and co-opted our business directory content into their results, cutting both our traffic and our ad revenues.
But we saw continued growth in traffic and ad revenues on our TransCanadaHighway.com website, and continued opportunities to grow and expand the content. When the COVID lockdown hit, it caused chaos in many business sectors, and we found our calls to TransCanadaHighway.com were from individuals trying to navigate across Canada to return home, so they could isolate with their friends and family in familiar surroundings.
We quickly added and updated COVID-19 content on our website. And made it focus on our Facebook page with travel tips.
The Process
The very first step was to migrate the existing “TCH” content over to the WordPress platform and improve it from there. Part of this process was to review all our visual assets, to provide web users with a more graphic/photographic experience on the new website.
We also fact-checked each of the pages, updating community population numbers, municipal/tourism website links, and rechecking for closed and new attractions.
At THIS POINT we could migrate the DNSes for TransCanadaHighway to the new hosting, so the world saw our new WordPress website, with equivalent content to the pre-existing APS website. And get the search engines to re-spider and re-index the site’s pages and files.
Then we migrated the many prelevant ages of information from each FoundLocally community over to the TransCanadaHighway.com website, though now strictly from the visitor’s perspective.
There was information about airports, shopping, entertainment, festivals that was stronger on the FoundLocally site that was ported over and built into the community pages on TransCanadHighway.com.
We also added towns and communities that were profiled as “nearby” but did not lie on the Trans-Canada to TransCanadaHighway.com.
We realized we were expanding the strategic focus from just “the national highway” to highway travel across and around all parts of Canada
Our third step was to migrate over the key parts of the business directory, that were businesses and organizations that were focused on the travel and hospitality sector (which meant bye-bye to 80% of our directory in the B2B (accounts, lawyers, web designers, etc.), homes & home improvement (realtors, builders, movers), medical (doctors, dentists), and much of our B2C retail sector.
With our new FOCUS on the travel and hospitality sector, many business listings in our database were no longer relevant, and were ignored, but we also saw a need to expand our directory into areas we did not cover before.
Because the database structures were different a lot of cleanups had to be done, and seeking those out-of-business listings that needed to be removed (or at least marked “-closed permanently”)
Then, halfway through COVID, we did a top-to bottom redesign of the site to bring it up to expected graphic standards of a WordPress website, incorporating larger graphic images in the headers, and elsewhere around the site. We also updated and improved the integration of Google Maps into local community pages and the itineraries and tours. We improved the way our itinerary maps were displayed, our Tours and Detours maps, and our content “feature maps” like for lowest gas prices.
After-COVID Return to Normal
We saw an expended need to TransCanadaHighway.com after COVID travel restrictions were lifted, both for Canadians travelling, and for international visitors (at least once inbound border restrictions eased up, which look longer than most had planned for)
In the 2022 post-COVID period we continued making improvements:
Adding non-Trans-Canada Highway route overviews to our content, including the #3 Crowsnest Highway, #16 Yellowhead Highway northern route in western provinces, and #11 Ontario northern route, and the #7 Southern Ontario Route.
We continued work to improve the information quality and visual presentation of website content.
Our research to expand the business directory added 4,300 businesses and organizations to our website including adult traveller content like wineries, brew pubs, ski hills, and golf courses, and for families travelling we added waterslides, go-kart tracks, mini-golf, national parks, first nations, and historical sites, and for traveller emergency preparedness we added police, fire, and hospitals.
Recently (in 2023) we started the transition from JPEG to WEBP images to further speed up the website. as of this update, this is still ongoing.
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