The LFC City Explorer bus is a joint venture between Liverpool Football Club and Maghull Coaches. This sightseeing bus tour transports thousands of visitors and tourists from Liverpool city centre to Anfield stadium every year.

The Objective

LFC City Explorer approached us to design and develop a new mobile-ready website to promote the tour and accept online bookings. With the vast majority of people choosing to purchase tickets on impulse, the website needed to perform exceptionally well on mobile devices. Our primary goal was to craft a bold and engaging experience that showcased the tour's highlights, made it easy for customers to discover their nearest stop, and laid the foundations to reach international customers. As the client's core aim was to attract LFC fans worldwide, we focussed on international SEO from day one.

Web & UX/UI

The New Website

Our design team wanted to utilise big and bold Liverpool FC imagery to captivate fans and tourists alike, so we set out to do precisely that. Using attractive image assets such as player cut-outs, stadium photos and archive press images, we injected the club into the heart of the website. We designed a highly interactive online experience using modern UI/UX principles featuring overlapping elements, easy-to-use functionality, excellent performance on tablet and mobile devices, and rich on-site content. Working alongside a third-party booking system, we ensured that the process of buying tickets was as seamless and frictionless as possible, and we wrapped up by optimising performance for peak load times.

Interactive Stops Map

Using the Google Maps API, we built a custom tour map that allows visitors to choose their nearest stop, check current running times and book tickets online. We kept the custom map on-brand by using the API to modify the colours of roads and waterways to match Liverpool FC's corporate colours. Our developers ensured that the interactive map was just as usable on mobile devices as it was on desktop and laptops, an essential feature as a lot of the tour's customers only decide to book tickets after they've arrived in the city.

Live Weather Widget

As the tour is an open-top al fresco experience, we wanted to let customers know what they could expect from the unpredictable British weather! We built a custom weather widget to pull forecasted temperatures and weather conditions from the Dark Sky API and displayed the results as a scrollable feature. The colours of the weather tiles automatically vary depending on the average temperature for the day. This unique weather forecast feature sets the tour apart from comparable visitor experiences.

High Ranking Content

The new LFC City Explorer website contains several pillar pages that rank internationally for high-volume keywords related to Liverpool FC. We designed the pages to incorporate iconic imagery, transparent typography and well-structured content, creating an immersive reading experience for visitors. As users scroll and read through cornerstone content, we ensure that a booking widget is always present so that if they decide to take action, they can proceed to book tour tickets with ease. Pillar pages are arguably the most effective method to capitalise on inbound traffic from generic organic rankings.

SEO

Attracting Fans Internationally via Organic Search

Our goal was to reach new potential customers worldwide and show them what they can discover on the tour. After researching what queries fans were searching for, we structured the new website to align with popular and relevant keywords. We focused on two groups of keywords, including specific tour keywords such as ‘lfc tour bus’ and ‘anfield bus’ and generic club-related keywords such as ‘lfc facts’ and ‘lfc history’. Using powerful and proven strategies, our SEO team worked consistently to maintain first-position rankings for both keyword groups. The campaign continues to be highly effective in acquiring visitors from anywhere in the world.

Campaign Highlights

No. 1 ranking for 'lfc facts', 'liverpool views' and 'lfc tour bus'
No. 3 ranking for 'lfc history'
Increase of over 557 places on Google
Increase of over 836 places on Bing
Acquired traffic from over 150 different countries
Average session duration of 1:28s
62,716 new users acquired
Last updated 19-04-21

Creating an online and immersive experience that football fans love

They've been highly innovative when it comes to finding new ways in which our bus can reach people's eyes

We came to Activate Digital to help us launch the official bus tour for Liverpool Football Club. At the time, the venture hadn't been launched and we were seeking an agency to build a platform for marketing the new tour and promoting it online. It's safe to say they achieved this goal! For the website, we wanted to showcase the very best that LFC has to offer and attract football fans from all over. They created a website that seamlessly integrated our tour details with information on the club, including standout image assets. With a search marketing campaign, their team helped us reach an international audience through insightful content such as in-depth history and facts pieces. They've been highly innovative when it comes to finding new ways in which our bus can reach people's eyes. Activate Digital are always on hand to help us whenever we need something and we would choose them time and time again.

Ann Meek

Director, LFC City Explorer

Countries Served

150+

Rise in Google/Bing

1,393

Average Visit Duration

1m 28s

Last updated 19-04-21

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