Work
2010
Wincountryca.com is an interactive regional website giving visitors information and allowing them to add comments, insights and personal experiences.
Win Country is a newly developed theme for our client, the Chumash Casino Resort. Taking the Santa Ynez wine country location of the Casino, and expanding that regionality, we developed a new website, Wincountryca.com. Partnering with Santa Ynez Valley businesses, Win Country incorporates content with interactivity, allowing site users to provide insights, experiences and comments when visiting Win Country business. Built using WordPress as the publishing platform, the new website supports future additions of new business partners and content, addition of functionality as the Win Country programs expands, all with real-time publishing.
Wincountryca.com is attracting a continuously growing audience of users, generating return/repeat visits and positions the Chumash Casino in a much expanded role as partner to and with the larger region.
2009
A new Chumash Casino Resort website
The Chumash Casino Resort is a successful Native American-owned casino and long-time agency client. EHY’s Interactive Services team built the Casino’s website some four years ago, and provides content management and other marketing services. The website gave visitors daily refreshed information about all the promotions, entertainment and gaming options, as well as hotel and spa services.
Over time, the Casino’s business requirements expanded, and website design and capabilities advanced. We developed a recommendation for creating a new website that would support some of the Casino’s new capabilities, including an online room reservations engine and online HR recruitment application. And we looked for methods to increase the user’s interactivity and ease of navigation, all while delivering an online experience that emulated the excitement and fun found in the Casino.
Design was our first consideration. The agency provides much of the marketing and advertising services the Casino needs, which provided us with all the content, from images and photos, to entertainment schedules, music and more, that would be needed. With the content available, the challenge focused on design: how to move the brand into a very contemporary look and feel, how to increase user interaction, how to deliver easy-to-use online applications, in an exciting and interesting way.
The new website included some key design features to support our development objectives:
Horizontal page layout: this approach widened the page, but reduced scrolling, giving the user the ability to glance quickly at the page and understand its content. We also added in-page navigation, such the user can click on images or links within the page to reach additional information or to take specific actions. This in-page navigation made using the website more intuitive and easier.
Day-of-the-week calendar: the Casino has numerous promotions during a typical month, and it can be confusing what is happening when. We wanted to inform users about what is happening the day they visit the website, and also generate a sense of urgency to encourage them to visit. The day-of-the-week calendar displays that day’s promotions and gives the user a feeling that the content and information is current, and thus, accurate.
Integrated music player: a simple device to let users hear music from acts before their appearance, the music player adds to the sense of interactivity and timely-delivered content.
Integrated applications: not unique to this website, but important to enhance the interactive objectives, an online room reservations and an HR recruitment applications were added, increasing the website’s utility.
Content management platform: to keep the regular and large number of promotions, entertainment acts, tournaments and more that occur at the Casino, the website includes a fully integrated content management system. Content is changed or added on a daily basis, giving the user confidence that they are seeing information that is accurate, and making the website a destination to visit repeatedly.
The key to the successful development of the new Chumash Casino Resort website was in first identifying and establishing the website and the Casino’s goals. With objectives clearly defined from the project’s begining, the website was delivered both on time and on budget.
