Elmwood Spa resides in a beautiful historical landmark building in the heart of downtown Toronto. It began as a YMCA 130 years ago and then under the vision of Sherry Brydson became The Elmwood Women’s Club in 1982. Since then Elmwood Spa has transformed into one of Canada’s most iconic destination spas–and they were looking for their own refresh to enhance the experience they offer online.
Elmwood Spa wanted to create an online experience that exceeds the expectations of its guests, but also desired a web presence that matches its history and heritage. The goal was laser-focused: to share its belief of well-being with their community. Our strategy? The new site would need to tell a story, showcase the full Elmwood Experience, and continue the brand’s iconic image; all while becoming an added channel to attract more visitors and generate online revenue.
We discovered the Elmwood Way by being treated like VIP Elmwood guests ourselves: our team spent the day at the spa, getting a hands-on experience of what it would feel like to be an Elmwood guest. This boosted our ability to strategize and execute a Gameplan that is true to the experience for the refresh project.
The look and feel of the new site is inspired by the historical exterior of Elmwood Spa’s building. We wanted to retain the charm and history while introducing modern elements that reflect the spa’s leading technologies. The result? A rich color palette, accent fonts, textures, photography and iconography that compliments a new intuitive website interface that’s fully integrated for e-commerce.
We wanted the new site to start the Elmwood Experience online and continue this experience for the guest until their appointment day at the spa. To accomplish this, we focused on an information architecture and navigation that allows visitors to easily find, learn more about and book exactly what they are looking for. Whether it is à la carte Spa Services, Package & Retreats or Group Events, we made sure that it is an enjoyable experience that emphasizes the Elmwood Experience.
Offering over 60 spa treatments and 20+ unique packages, it is important to make it easy for visitors to understand all the services that are offered. We streamlined each treatment into its own menu, making it easy to book each one individually–ultimately improving guest conversion.
We are strong believers that every visitor to a website is a chance to create a customer for life. We designed the site to offer guests multiple ways to connect with the Elmwood team. From traditional contact forms to social media follows and even online chat, we made sure guests are supported at any point while navigating the site.
It’s a great looking site that also ranks on first page. We know that SEO works when it isn’t an after-thought in a design process. From day one we used an SEO-optimized architecture and ensured every on-page SEO technique was deployed to deliver first page results on Google for the site.
Elmwood Spa has its own internal team that creates content that needs updating daily. We configured the backend editor so that it is easy to onboard any new team member as a contributor, a breeze to update and publish, and intuitive to change and tweak with drag and drop features. This ensures the site is kept as refreshed as the spa’s own guests!
It was no small feat: to create a new digital property that can live up to the history and charm of an iconic destination spa. With over 3,000 visitors and 20+ pre-booking online transactions completed per day, we know that we have not only designed an amazing looking site that uses the design cues of this one-of-a-kind property; we’ve also made sure it performs above the competition when it comes to being found on Google and converting every visitor’s shopping cart.