Glasgow Life
Helping Glasgow's people and visitors get the most from the city.
Visit Glasgow
Delivering a modern, scalable platform to inspire discovery of Scotland’s largest city
The ask
In 2025, Visit Glasgow, the official destination marketing organisation for Scotland’s largest city, sought to revitalise its primary customer-facing website, visitglasgow.com. Tasked with supporting a diverse audience, including residents, UK and international tourists, and prospective students, the existing site no longer met the city’s ambitions to reflect its vibrancy, cultural richness and global appeal. Storm ID was approached to deliver a full digital transformation, creating a platform capable of inspiring new audiences and supporting Glasgow’s strategic objectives in tourism, local discovery and student attraction.
Key requirements included improving international reach, providing a scalable content structure for future growth, and ensuring delivery within tight, parallel workstreams. The project’s scope focused on rebuilding visitglasgow.com, ensuring it would meet modern expectations for usability, performance and discoverability.
What we did
The project was approached using a phased, collaborative methodology. Throughout the process, close cooperation with Visit Glasgow personnel was central. Open communication channels ensured that the team could iteratively gather feedback, incorporate local expertise and adapt to evolving requirements as new insights emerged.
Discovery phase
The project started with an in-depth discovery phase designed to align user needs with Visit Glasgow’s long-term objectives. Activities included exploring the motivations of key audience groups, reviewing the existing site's structure and integrations, and defining how the new website should be organised. Foundations for a flexible design system were established, and the culmination of this phase resulted in initial website designs that provided a clear direction for the project.
SEO and content phase
To strengthen Visit Glasgow’s digital presence, particularly in international markets such as Germany, the Netherlands, France and Canada, a targeted SEO and content phase followed. This involved developing tailored SEO strategies, offering analytics recommendations for ongoing performance monitoring and delivering clear content guidelines with practical examples and component usage instructions. These resources enabled the team to create effective, consistent content and provided a robust framework for future development.
Build phase
Building on the groundwork laid in earlier phases, visitglasgow.com was rebuilt using the Umbraco CMS. The new site features refreshed designs, an improved information architecture, integrations with live data of events across Glasgow and a flexible, component-based system to accommodate varied content needs.
Live phase
The phase focused on preparing the new website for public launch. Activities included final checks, supporting content readiness and coordinating launch operations to ensure a seamless transition. With various dependencies the project was delivered on time.
The team’s collaborative phased approach ensured our input shaped every stage. Their open communication, attention to detail and commitment to our goals resulted in a dynamic, user-friendly website that truly reflects Glasgow. We’re as delighted with the site as our stakeholders and visitors to Glasgow are.
Results
The new Visit Glasgow website now stands as a robust, future-ready digital platform that:
- Inspires people to visit, explore and experience Glasgow’s unique culture and energy.
- Supports international discovery through enhanced SEO and content strategy.
- Encourages students from around the world to consider Glasgow as a place to live and study.
- Provides Visit Glasgow with a flexible, scalable system capable of adapting to future ambitions and growth.
Effective project management and strong collaboration between Storm ID and Glasgow Life were key to overcoming challenges, maintaining clear organisation and ensuring a positive delivery experience. The outcome is a dynamic and engaging destination platform that reflects Glasgow’s diversity and global appeal.
Experience Glasgow’s energy, diversity, and global welcome first-hand. Visit the new destination website today: visitglasgow.com
