Explore Like A Tourist Planner & Squarespace e-commerce website
The challenge
Pretty early in the pandemic, while working with Kerra Aucoin Mansfield of KA Social Media, she wanted to do something to help small businesses as they started opening up again. At that time, she was running a blog called ‘Eat, Drink & Be You’, a personal travel blog dedicated to exploring the Maritimes with her family.
We started with a small social media challenge, calling on people to ‘Explore Like A Tourist’ and tag her for a chance to win.
As more people participated, Kerra started gathering a list of all the places across Nova Scotia she wanted people to explore. Once she reached over 700 ideas, she wanted to turn it into a planner.
The Planner
I worked with Kerra on the content and design of the planner, taking her through iterations based on her ideas until we came up with a layout that worked. The original planner included all the different regions of Nova Scotia, plus a place to write down memories of each location as customers used them to document their journies and check off their bucket lists.
The first planner was a huge success, quickly picked up by many local shops, as well as being sold online.
In 2024, we revisited the original design, replacing any closed businesses with new places to explore and updating the overall design to make it more seamless and easy to use. She also wanted to cut down on the production cost and pass that savings on to her customers, so we worked with the printer to come up with the 2024-2025 Explore Like A Tourist In Nova Scotia planner.
e-commerce via squarespace
Since the planner was a single product, and the old ‘Eat, Drink & Be You’ website wouldn’t support e-commerce securely, Kerra decided to reposition the whole brand to ‘Explore Like A Tourist,’ moving her blog content and blog to a Squarespace website with e-commerce added in.
For this project, I worked on:
The layout and overall design of the Explore Like A Tourist In Nova Scotia Planner and it’s 2024 update, plus the Amazon files.
Design of a simple Squarespace website to fit within her current Retainer hours, installation of the e-commerce side of things and newsletter creation within the platform.
Moved all relevant blog content to Squarespace.
Provided supporting graphics for promoting her planner.
This was definitely one of the most fun projects that I got to see continue to be used and loved on social media. I was happy to be able to provide Kerra with the flexibility within our existing retainer to make this new dream come true as well!
"magical unicorn!"
Crystal’s quality of work, precision, and dedication are top-notch! The price is amazing for the huge skillset, and I just jumped in and will never jump out again. Crystal is a magic unicorn, and everyone needs her on their team!
—Kerra Aucoin Mansfield, Social Media Consultant behind KA Social Media
KA Social Media
Working with Kerra since 2019, I have been her right hand woman for everything ranging from online content mangement for her blogs and free resources to setting up full sales funnels, lead magnets, course content and more.
One of our ongoing projects is working on her website, and you can find out more about that project here.