VisitVaughan Website Refresh

Website walkthrough: https://platform.crowdriff.com/m/s-cJkJaqBDpDo-2CO-

In September 2024, the VisitVaughan.ca website was refreshed with three primary objectives:

To transform Vaughan’s digital tourism presence into a modern, user-centric platform that supports local businesses and drives economic activity through a ‘Plan Your Visit’ itinerary builder and a ‘My Stay’ page.
To enhance the user experience by connecting Tourism Vaughan’s business directories and event listings with Central Counties Tourism’s (RTO6) yorkdurhamheadwaters.ca.
To provide Tourism Vaughan staff with backend access to manage the website and have access to key performance indicators through Google Analytics, which previously was not possible.

The most recent data available for the original website is pageviews between January and May 2022. We note these metrics but take into consideration a) the continued impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and b) the increased brand awareness that Tourism Vaughan has achieved. From January 1 to May 31, VisitVaughan.ca’s pageviews increased by 443% from 2022 to 2025.

To consider other metrics as we have yet to obtain year-over-year data, we examine the organic increase in unique visitors, engagement rate and average session duration from the first quarter of the site’s launch (September 1 to November 30, 2024) and compare them to our last reportable quarter (April 1 to June 30, 2025). Organic unique visitors increased by 67%, the engagement rate rose by 31%, and average session duration increased by 60%. While we don’t have year-over-year data to compare directly, these comparisons offer insight into the website’s usage.

The ‘Plan Your Visit’ itinerary builder allows users to select from all business and event listings on VisitVaughan.ca to create a mappable itinerary of things to do in Vaughan. This includes limited-time or newly added events, restaurants, attractions, hotels, and more. Selections are shared to the ‘My Stay’ page, which utilizes browser cache to remember their choices and provides the opportunity to download their plan.

VisitVaughan.ca is directly connected to YorkDurhamHeadwaters.ca, the consumer-focused website for Central Counties Tourism (RTO6), meaning business owners and event organizers need to upload or edit their listings in only one place. This provides consistency for potential visitors and offers significant ease for organizers, saving them time and stress.

One of the key challenges was balancing the diverse needs of our stakeholders, ranging from local businesses and cultural institutions to event organizers and visitors. Through stakeholder consultations, Tourism Vaughan refined the site’s architecture, ensuring intuitive navigation to ease the customer journey. Accessibility was also a priority, with the site designed to meet WCAG 2.1 AA standards. Feedback loops were established post-launch to improve content and functionality based on analytics continuously.

The primary audience includes leisure travellers, predominantly families, typically aged 25–54, with young children. Our secondary audience is local residents.

The site promotes nature-based travel by highlighting green spaces, conservation areas, and public transit options. From a digital sustainability perspective, the platform was designed with scalability and longevity in mind, utilizing a CMS that facilitates low-maintenance content updates, simple steps for content addition, and architecture that enables growth across various directories, campaigns, and more.