How Visit Indy Built a High-Performance Website Designed for Speed, Discovery, and Scale
By designing a fast, motion-forward digital ecosystem built around how people search, scroll, and plan, Visit Indy launched a website that reflects the city’s momentum and positions Indianapolis as America’s host city.
2.7M
Total Sessions
+77%
YOY Growth of Blog Visits
131K+
Partner Referrals from VisitIndy.com
A City Built for Speed and Scale
For Visit Indy, momentum is more than a metaphor. From global sporting events to conventions and cultural experiences, Indianapolis is built to host at scale while making visitors feel like locals.
That spirit is perhaps best embodied by the Indianapolis 500, where precision, performance, and movement define the experience. Visit Indy wanted its website to reflect that same sense of speed and confidence, while remaining welcoming, intuitive, and easy to navigate across devices.
The challenge was to support how people actually discover destinations today. Visitors often arrive through search, deep content, or event-specific pages rather than a single starting point. The site needed to perform on mobile first, protect and grow organic visibility, and serve leisure, meetings, and sports audiences without forcing them into linear paths.
Designed for Discovery, Built for Movement
Tempest partnered with Visit Indy to create a digital experience that feels fast, fluid, and responsive across the entire site. Launched in June 2025, the website uses motion, scroll, and interaction to reinforce Indianapolis’ identity as a city built on movement, innovation, and progress.
Rather than centering the experience on one entry point, the site supports multiple paths in, meeting users where they arrive and helping them move quickly from inspiration to planning. Intuitive search, dynamic content pathways, and flexible planning tools guide exploration, while a reimagined “I in Indy” serves as a connective thread for trip building.
Visit Indy’s content had evolved into a complex ecosystem, requiring a nuanced, data-driven approach. Tempest analyzed nearly 800 blogs and close to 300 pages to understand performance, user intent, and topic overlap, then restructured the information architecture to create clearer thematic signals. This work reduced internal competition, sharpened topical authority around major events, attractions, and experiences, and positioned Visit Indy for stronger visibility across search and emerging AI-powered discovery platforms.
The platform also leverages multisite manager technology, supporting Visit Indy alongside ROSE Awards and Film Indy. Each site maintains its own audience and mission while benefiting from shared systems, aligned design, and operational efficiency.
Performance That Keeps Pace
In the first six months following launch, VisitIndy.com generated 2.7 million total sessions. Organic engagement rate reached 94%, a 24% year-over-year increase, signaling deeper interaction across content and planning tools. Organic blog visits grew more than 77% year over year, reflecting improved discoverability and relevance. The site also delivered more than 131,000 partner referrals, reinforcing its role as a meaningful driver of value for the local tourism community.
Together, these results reflect a website built to perform at speed. Visit Indy now has a future-ready digital foundation that supports evolving traveler behavior, major events, partner visibility, and emerging AI-powered discovery, all while capturing the unmistakable momentum of Indianapolis.
Explore Our Solutions
At Tempest, we define growth as a broad, data-driven approach focused on ensuring visitors connect with your destination at every stage of the travel planning process.
The Tempest web development team are digital craftspeople building destination websites that set the benchmark for the industry.
