Opulist

• Client Wins

  Sara and her team really nailed the content marketing for Opulist, and with the refreshed directory, things just skyrocketed:

  • Instagram Growth: It all started with fewer than 5k followers at the end of May, and by the end of the year—boom—41k followers!

  • Cool Perks: All that buzz also snagged them five comped hotel stays.

  And guess what? That social media love gave everything else a huge lift, too:

  • Website Visits: Jumped from just 2,127 visits in May 2024 to a whopping 7,349 by January 2025.

  • Newsletter Sign-Ups: The number of new subscribers each month grew impressively from 310 in May to 916 by January, helping to cultivate a vibrant Opulist community.

  It just goes to show, when you combine a strong online presence with the right website features, you can really ignite your other channels and drive impressive growth across the board.

• Project Type

  • Website Design

  • Website Development

• Features

  • Directory

  • Map Directory

Working alongside Sara, the visionary behind Opulist, we transformed her passion for exploring beautiful places into a fun directory that's just as lively as her ideas.

Sara already had a comprehensive website, but it was missing a critical feature—a map view to complement her meticulously curated list of uniquely designed eateries, bars, coffee shops, and hotels.

With her existing branding elements like the logo and fonts—and a slight tweak in colors for enhanced user accessibility—we revamped the directory's landing page to align perfectly with her vision, both in usability and aesthetic appeal.

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Before and after of the directory refresh with the map feature.

Client’s Results After Launching

The real excitement kicked off with documenting the success that followed the launch. Thanks to a solid content marketing strategy by Sara and her team, and the newly optimized directory, Opulist saw substantial growth:

• Instagram Growth: Launched on May 31st with just under 5k followers, by year's end, the Instagram account ballooned to 41k followers with high engagement, supporting over 2M+ monthly pageviews in Q4.

• Tangible Perks: The visibility also translated into tangible perks, securing five comped hotel stays in exchange for featured content.

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Opulist Instagram growth two weeks after the launch date (May 31st) to December 2024

Website and User Engagement

This huge social media growth continued to spread to her website traffic. From 2,127 visitors prior to the launch in May 2024 to an impressive 7,349 visitors by January 2025.

Squarespace analytics for Opulist a month before the launch date (May 31, 2024) to the end of January 2025

The refresh directory also sparked growth in newsletter subscriptions. The number of new subscribers each month grew impressively from 310 in May to 916 by January, helping to cultivate a vibrant Opulist community.

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Opulist newsletter subscribers a month before launch date (May 31st) to January 2025

Evaluating the New Features

About seven months post-launch, we assessed the new features:

• User Interaction: Besides social media, which remains the favorite way for users to discover new places (50.4%), the newly added map feature has become the second most utilized tool on the site (22.9%). This strong usage indicates that we’re definitely on the right track.

• Marketing Opportunity: This survey also shows that half of the users love finding new spots through Opulist social media posts (50.4%). This means the marketing effort from the Opulist team is spot on and it’s a great cue for them to promote the handy map feature even more.

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Survey response on user interaction from February 2025

• User Accessibility: Most users are giving the new feature thumbs up, with the majority rating usability a 4 or 5 out of 5. It's great to see that it’s been so helpful! While there’s always room to tweak and improve as the brand grows, these scores are definitely encouraging

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Survey response on site useability from February 2025

Kind Words

★★★★★

Working with Helen on the new version of my site was a dream. She completely grasped the vision I had for adding a map element to the site, and not only delivered on it, but created something better than I could have imagined.

Our new and improved site brings me so much joy and is so fun to use now. Not only did she perfectly execute on the task at hand, but she was wonderful to work with and presented future ideas that I can't wait to get to work on together down the road.

If you're on the fence about hiring a designer / developer, I can't recommend working with Helen enough. It is beyond worth the investment so you can not only create what you want together, but spend your time on the things you want to do while she works her magic on your website.

So grateful to have Helen as a part of my "team" and can't wait to create more magic together in the future!

Sara

Founder of Opulist

Reflection

This project was so much more than just sprucing up a page. It was about bringing Sara’s vision to life for Opulist—a site that not only looks fantastic but also amplifies their current marketing efforts.

By adding resourceful features, we significantly broadened Opulist’s online presence and boosted audience engagement.

Seeing all the pieces fall into place and witnessing the positive impact? Incredibly rewarding!