Six takeaways from the SAHARA Las Vegas digital team

24 Apr 2020 | Accessibility

Adam Turner
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Here at Sitemorse we are lucky to work with some great clients around the world. One of our newer clients is the SAHARA Las Vegas, an iconic hotel, casino and resort located on The Strip in Las Vegas. Originally built in 1957, the hotel is part of Las Vegas’ history, with a string of famous guests who epitomise the glamour of the city.

Acquired by the Meruelo Group in 2018, the resort has been rebranded to highlight its illustrious past and is receiving significant levels of investment to continue to deliver a unique boutique guest experience.

The investment has also extended to the digital realm with a new website, rebranding exercise, digital toolset and a new digital marketing team. We are proud that Sitemorse is playing its part in revitalising this exciting brand.

We caught up with Kat Carrera, the Director of Digital Marketing, to document how the team are moving forward with rebuilding the hotel’s digital presence. Here are six interesting things we learnt.

  1. Accessibility aligns with the hotel’s core values

    If you regularly read this blog, you will know that we believe accessibility is critical and improving web accessibility is a no-brainer. Despite this, too many organisations either pay lip service to accessibility or do not prioritise it enough. One of the reasons that Carrera and her team place a strong emphasis on improving the accessibility of the SAHARA’s website is because it aligns with the hotel’s core values where all guests are welcome. This means the reasons for improving accessibility are not just compliance-driven, although this aspect is important.

    Carrera explains  “Web accessibility and staying compliant is something we are very conscious of, and something we’re addressing in the redesign too. Everyone is welcome at SAHARA and we wanted to make sure our website reflected that, as well as meeting our legal and regulatory commitments. “

  2. Service monitoring has real value

    Service interruptions for the SAHARA comes at a cost. If the website is down and guests are unable to make a room booking it has a direct impact on revenue and also indirectly damages the brand. Therefore, it is no surprise that Carrera’s team have found that the real-time service monitoring capabilities within Sitemorse have provided real value. Carrera comments:

    “There’s been times when the alerts from Sitemorse have arrived earlier than our actual site monitoring service so we’re able to reach out sooner to our hosting company and our booking engine and find out what’s going on.”  

  3. An enhanced site search helps with managing critical site changes

    As part of the hotel’s overall improvement there has been an extensive rebranding exercise; this means that content has had to be rewritten, assets modified, designs updated and so on. Going forward, smaller rebranding exercises also happen regularly at the resort to reflect changes to the resort’s restaurants and shows.

    Having a highly detailed site search that can identify every page and every asset (including images and PDFs that must be changed) is extremely useful in managing the detail of the brand change and ensuring that every change has been made. It has also been important from a legal standpoint to ensure commitments to the brand switch have been fully implemented. For this purpose, the team continue to leverage Sitemorse’s LIVEARCHIVE facility that records the entire site, helps identify everything associated with an aspect of the brand, and also records what changes have been made.

  4. Having a measurement strategy is key

    Measurement is critical for digital improvement, allowing you to identify the changes that need to be implemented, the effectiveness of actions and progress made over time. Carrera and her team have a measurement strategy that recognises the importance of getting the right numbers in and also the range of different criteria to measure. Having clarity for this means that the team are able to look at a range of tools to cover different aspects of measurement, for example with Sitemorse focusing on elements such as accessibility, SEO, performance, content quality and more.

  5. Automation can help through a web design process

    Automation is often recognised as the only practical way to assess and test content on an ongoing basis. However, automation has also proved to be a valuable approach through the web design processes that are being carried out as part of a site refresh to reflect the new brand. For example, to ensure accessibility compliance on new page designs, the team have used Sitemorse. Carrera explains:

    “We’ve used Sitemorse all the way through the redesign process to show us some of the errors that we have. We’ve communicated these to the new developers and said these need to be addressed.”

  6. Continuous improvement is one of the keys to success

    As Carrera revitalises the SAHARA’s brand,  she is working on the basis of continual improvement to ensure the digital experiences that visitors receive match the kind of service they get when they stay at the resort. For example, there are plans to potentially integrate third party digital services more tightly into the overall Sahara web experience and also explore the range of capabilities within Sitemorse such as CMS integration, benchmarking and expanding service monitoring to third party applications. Continual improvement is a mindset and we are excited to see how the SAHARA’s digital footprint will evolve in the future.

Need more information? Download the case study

We have enjoyed working with Kat Carrera and her team. They are true digital rockstars and taking the SAHARA Las Vegas brand and digital presence to the next level. If you’d like more information about the team’s approach and how they are leveraging Sitemorse then download the client statement. (No form to be filled out, clicking the link goes straight to the PDF to download).