Visit Scotland - The Scottish Tourist Board Website

According to this Scotsman article, VisitScotland aka the Scottish tourist board, should be scrapped and replaced. As I browsed the VisitScotland website I realised it didn't welcome me to the country at all. It's a cold layout, starving for larger images of Scotland, and perhaps a hint of tartan too! Not tartan overkill you understand, but this is a tourism site, no matter what Visit Scotland may be trying to portray Scotland as (it's not too obvious), tourists want to see tartan, hills, sheep, lochs, castles, ruins... all in the first click. What's obvious is that VS are really pushing their accommodations, and the website feels more like a holiday rental website.

Should a tourism website not capture the feel of a country, ambience and excitement? Do geese on the inspire me page, inspire you to visit? Or would an image of Glencoe in September under blue skys not be slightly better?

Why so many images containing people? Take the inspire me page again, how many photos do you see that do not have people in them. The download guide image, do back of strangers heads inspire you? The golfers distract from the scenery and are not required, an image of a flag with the mountains in the background would be much more powerful without the golfers, the Land Rover picture is bleak, the blue and red backpackers in the photo are a distraction. I know they are trying to have you visualise being there, but Scotland doesn't require staging. Visitors want to look at images of hills, lochs and views and believe they may be the only people there, escaping from the world and their hectic lifes, put people in every image including the back of beyond and they wont feel that.

As for the depth of clicking involved in the website, horrible! 5 clicks deep and I'm still starving for some worthwhile images and Scottishness and helpful information that I've been looking for since the index page. Tiny images do not provide the visual stimulation that Scotland can so easily provide through good photos.

This is just my take on the website anyway, I am in the tourism industry though, and after 3 years of rentals in Edinburgh, I feel I know what tourists are looking for. We dont need a modern website, with perfect blue blocks and cold white backgrounds. I'll give them a little credit for trying though, as they used the word 'wee' at least once.

I've also created a Glencoe image just for Visit Scotland which I feel will suit their website perfectly....

Glencoe in early Autumn