GameWorks.com
The old GameWorks website was slow, didn’t promote product lines, had zero SEO strategy, lacked original content, and it was UGLY.
So I changed it.
A Website that gets it…
**Photo and video content on gameworks.com produced by WEST Productions
At its core, GameWorks is about FUN. The bright lights in the arcade, over-the-top milkshakes, prizes won from tickets earned, esports tournaments, just GOOD PLAIN FUN. I introduced full bleed video to the website, mobile friendly layouts, a robust SEO strategy, and much more to make this project a success. For the new website I did:
Updated company brand standards with completely new digital standards
Fully reimagined UI / UX that prioritized product lines
Robust SEO and content strategy (Pre and post launch)
Original video and photo content
Phased rollout plan to more effectively train internal stakeholders
Visit the website HERE
Lead with Arcade
The website needed a hierarchy for content that was rooted in reality. For this, I did a deep dive on in-venue revenue to see where we ACTUALLY MADE MONEY. By understanding what was paying our bills, I was able to organize the content on the site AND help internal stakeholders understand why certain content might not fall above the fold. The hierarchy went:
Arcade
Esports
Food and Beverage
Event Sales (which if done right, promoted all of the above)
Location Specific Content
The realty of a multi-venue business is that guests are drawn in by the global message, but retained by the individual/local experience. I approached the new website with this understanding, and in every way possible, tried to tailor content to be responsive based on an individuals geographical location. By using a users IP address, we were able to present only relevant content. Guests saw promotions, arcade games, esports tournaments, and food offerings that were available at their nearest GameWorks without having to navigate to a location page.
Make it delicious
In partnership with our executive chef, we launched a delicious and quite extensive menu at GameWorks. It fell on me to ensure guests could browse the full menu online, while still accomplishing our goal of location specific content. I designed the interactive menu above for location pages. Test out the menu block HERE
Speed it up!
Abysmal website speeds equal high bounce rates – that’s website 101. The challenge is presenting a visually heavy website and maintaining speed. By caching images, compressing content, and implementing latent load, we saw improvement across the board. Our bounce rate for important landing pages dropped, dwell time skyrocketed, and page views per user tripled.
The next step was converting these metrics to actual visitors spending actual dollars in our actual stores.
Keys to Conversion
“The website doesn’t make money”, was a refrain i heard from others internally. With that, it became incumbent on me to prove that the website was driving revenue in-venue. Using Google Analytics and GoogleAds, I was able to track digital interactions from mobile devices to our POS effectively proving the value of gameworks.com
read the case study
Libraries
I spent several months collecting data on guest inquiries. I wanted to know what the guests were most curious about, and where they needed to be educated. I learned that guests most often called a venue to ask about hours of operation and whether we had a certain game on the game floor or in the esports lounge. The first question was an easy solution, move hours above the fold on location content. The second took a little imagination. I designed a visual library for both the arcade and the esports lounge. Users could browse a locations offering, and it opened the door for our brand to collaborate with game publishers and arcade manufacturers to more prominently feature their new products..
