Best Website

Palms Casino revamps website to rave reviews

Palms.com got a makeover at the same time the hotel physically underwent a renovation. The result was increased traffic and lots of press coverage.

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In June 2012, the Las Vegas-based Palms Casino Resort began a $50 million renovation of its rooms and suites, casino, and dining and nightlife experiences.

And to cap it off, in May 2013, the resort got a redesigned website: http://www.palms.com/.

The Palms in-house digital media and PR team and its agency of record, Kirvin Doak Communications, launched the website in conjunction with a PR campaign. The Palms partnered with SapientNitro and Adobe Experience Manager to build the site.

Among the new site’s goals were to have a design that matched the physical, on-property Palms transformation, and to increase website traffic and time spent on the site.

The redesigned site met those goals and won the Palms Casino Resort and Kirvin Doak Communications the prize for Best Website in PR Daily’s 2013 Media Relations Awards.

Since the launch, the website’s bounce rate has declined dramatically. From June 1, 2013, to August 22, 2013, there was a nearly 50 percent decline. There has also been an increase in page visits.

From July 2012 to July 2013, there was a 123 percent increase in users on a mobile device and a 66 percent increase in users on a tablet device.

The launch
On May 23, 2013, the Palms team, in conjunction with SapientNitro, successfully launched the new Palms.com. The new site debuted in the early morning hours when Web traffic was low, as to not disturb the digital guest experience.

The PR team pitched and secured exclusive stories with the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Vegas Inc. to coincide with the launch of the new website.

In conjunction with the media exclusives, the team drafted and distributed an announcement press release to targeted beats such as tech, travel, and business. The team also created a multimedia news release on PR Newswire to show the visual aspects of the website. The multimedia news release resulted in pickup from more than 366 outlets, resulting in an estimated 73,446,000 impressions.

We congratulate the following staff members on their efforts:

Alex Acuna, director of public relations, Palms Casino Resort
Lindsay Feldman, public relations specialist, Palms Casino Resort
Alana Litavis, executive director of advertising and public relations, Palms Casino Resort
Erin Levzow, executive director of marketing and e-commerce, Palms Casino Resort
Robyn Phelan, interactive marketing manager, Palms Casino Resort
Kate Whiteley, vice president, Kirvin Doak Communications
Stephanie Chavez, account executive, Kirvin Doak Communications
Allee Bennett, assistant account executive, Kirvin Doak Communications

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