Choose Chicago: Web Design & Dev Case Study

The setup

One of America's great cities, without a website to match

Our media programs had been driving record visitation for years, and the website was where all that traffic landed. By 2019 it was the constraint on everything upstream of it.

The scale was the first problem. Thousands of pages of content, more than 1,500 member businesses, and no reliable way to connect a visitor to the experience or partner that actually fit them.

The second problem was that it did not look like Chicago. The neighborhoods, the food, the architecture, the lakefront. None of it came through on the property that was, by then, the front door to the city.

Our recommendation after discovery was to scrap every element except the member database. Then rebuild on a foundation flexible enough to serve visitors, meeting planners, travel trade, members, and the Chicago Sports Commission, without slowing down a small internal web team.

Our team delivered a record 9.4 million website visits.

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THE SOLUTION

A visually driven platform built on a flexible foundation

Envisionit led a multi-year initiative to rebuild the property end-to-end: stakeholder interviews, requirements definition, an audit of nearly 4,000 pages of content, and an entirely new visual experience. We established a visually rich, mobile-first approach with an emphasis on video and original photography, and directed the photo and video shoots and post-production ourselves.

Underneath the design, we re-platformed from Simpleview CMS to WordPress for flexibility and customization, then layered in a data infrastructure and tagging strategy that powers related content and site search. All while keeping the existing CRM intact.

Build highlights include:

Re-platform from Simpleview CMS to WordPress, with the member database and CRM preserved
A new immersive visual identity
An audit of nearly 4,000 pages of existing content
Integrations with Expedia, Simpleview CRM, Crowdriff, Mapbox, Miles Media ad network, and BotsCrew
Rebuilt member listings, event listings, and neighborhood pages
Separate on-site experiences for meeting planners, travel trade, members, and the Chicago Sports Commission
An integrated display ad strategy that scaled onsite revenue opportunities

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THE STRATEGY

Organized around visitor stage and search intent

We overhauled the site taxonomy and architecture around two questions: where is this person in their trip planning, and what are they actually looking for?

Content was audited, cleaned, and migrated in full. We rewrote key pages, optimized templates for technical and on-page SEO, and provided copywriting that carried the new brand voice throughout.

Dynamic surfacing of member businesses across the experience keeps 1,500+ partners visible where visitors are already browsing, turning inspiration into referrals.

And we built it to be run, not just launched. The content framework is dynamic and flexible enough that Choose Chicago’s small web team can adapt the site on their own.

THE RESULTS

Record traffic, stronger partner value, and a site the team can run

The new choosechicago.com exceeded every previous benchmark for visitation, content engagement, and conversion across hotel and trip bookings, visitor guide downloads, and meeting RFP leads.

305%

Increase in blog visits

25%

Increase in traffic to partner listings

18%

Increase in organic traffic

Why it matters:

Site migrations typically cost organic traffic. Through careful planning, organic traffic was up within weeks of launch
Partners are getting more visibility and referral volume from a platform that surfaces them dynamically
The site drew a record 9.4 million visits in 2021 and won Best Website at the Illinois Governor’s Conference on Travel & Tourism, while Chicago was named Best Big City in the U.S. by Condé Nast Traveler readers for the fifth straight year