A Homepage is like a blind date.
Some are awkward.
Some are desperate.
Some leave you wondering what the hell just happened.
Some dump their entire story on you so why would you need a second date?
Some are trying really hard to get lucky.
Some are sexy but have no substance.
Some, you have already stalked their Facebook profile and they’re nothing like it.
Some that are waaaaay older than you thought they’d be.
and then there are
Some that know all the right things to say.
Some that buy you a drink before expecting even a hello.
Some that offer you an easy way to connect with them.
Some that tell you a captivating story.
Some are genuine.
— A Homepage is Like a Blind Date, a poem by Blasphemi
The South African Tourism home page recently underwent a major change in a way that puts the social nature of today’s internet users top of mind.
“The South African Tourism project of revamping its home page had a clear goal: give the users of modern-day platforms what they require, from visual to enticing and clean content,” explains Kiril Velkov, part of the Flow design team who worked on the project. “We had to combine the power of social networking, rich blogs, strong visuals and a clean modern look in one place.
“The solution was to make content and visual the kings and let them do their magic.”
What you are greeted with now on the South African Tourism home page is a mix of large, colourful blocks with easy-to-read text, all displaying a mix of site content – including static pages and recent blog posts – and social content being pulled through from Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
Zander janse van Rensburg was one of the Flow developers who built the front-end functionality, and the back-end importer.
“The back-end pulls all the data it can get hold of and then saves it in a structured format. The project was quite challenging as not all social feeds provide the same, or in some cases even similar, data. It took many hours of testing and fixing to get the formats in such a way that we can use them reliably.”
“It’s great to have a home page that is different every day you look at it,” says Stephen Frank, also part of Flow’s development team in charge of the project. “If it’s not a new blog article or feature being promoted, you can always count on something interesting showing up in the social media feeds.”
“These days we personally invest a lot of resources generating content on multiple social media platforms which, usually, after being consumed, is then lost in the ether. This is the same for brands. What I think this platform brings is permanence and ownership over the content we generate every day and can serve for many more mash-ups and re-use beyond the home page.”
The result speaks for itself.
“The new social feeds integrated into our home page bring all of our #MeetSouthAfrica content together and put it into context for our consumers, allowing them to quickly find and share what they are most inspired by. And that’s truly brilliant and a first for destination marketing in Africa,” says William Price, head of digital for South African Tourism.
There’s lots to look at and read about on the new home page, so go explore! www.southafrica.net.
