Our Work
Tokyo American Club Events
Showcasing and promoting one of Tokyo's best venues for special events
The time had come to give the Tokyo American Club’s meeting and event facilities their own home on the web. Challenge accepted, said the team here at Netwise.
Netwise and the Tokyo American Club have enjoyed a working partnership spanning more than 10 years and multiple website iterations. During that time it has been our pleasure to design and build the online face of the Club across multiple channels. For this and other reasons we were delighted to have the opportunity to create another web property for the Club, and–working with the excellent Communications team there–to help grow to a core part of their business: events.
The microsite was to be created in English and Japanese and linked prominently from the main TAC website. The only difficulty would be that the main Club site has only English, while the primary target for the Events website is Japanese. Our task was to create pages in an existing section of the main website, and to integrate new elements into the navigation in such a way that they would be readily visible to Japanese users.
To this end we chose to add a button to the mega menu and a small button to the header in such a way that it would be noticeable yet unobtrusive. For the mobile version we made a sticky panel with buttons at the bottom of the screen. We added a “close” button as well, so that users could close this panel easily, should they so wish.
Another design goal was that the user should have the feeling that s/he is on a website separate and distinct from the main TAC website, but with the ability to navigate over to it effortlessly. We developed a separate navigation that stylistically replicates the navigation on the main site, but contains only elements related to the Banquet site. We also added a prominent link to the Club site.
As for the navigation on the mobile version, since the sticky panel linking over to the banquet website was located at the bottom on the main Club website, we concluded that this would be the logical place to put the navigation elements for the Events website as well. This navigation element has been found to work well on the ANA InterContinental website (portfolio entry here), and is positioned in such a way as to be easily accessible using the thumb while holding a smartphone.
Finally, the all-important Contact button remains visible at all times on both PC and smartphone, both simplifying and encouraging inquiries.
The style and design of the main elements match those of the Club website. To make the site more modern and engaging we added some animations to the elements, while at the same time making the design more organized and simple, with just the right amount of large, beautiful visuals.
One of the more complicated pages content-wise was the Category page. To organize the information and present it well we chose to use the slider for Event Packages (offers) along with an accordion for the Venues details sections.
Event Packages were designed to the full width of the screen, so that as much information as possible could be consumed at a glance. We also wanted to allow the page to support a large volume of content, as the offers were expected to increase in number over time.
The accordions in the Venues sections helped us make efficient use of the available space. Clicking on the DETAILS button will expand the area below such that the full venue details are made visible.
Finally, each section has a CONTACT button–the main CTA throughout the website–providing one-click access to the website’s inquiry form.
Want to take a closer look? Check out the new TAC Events website at https://events.tokyoamericanclub.org/en/.
