Routes & Itineray Planner
Creating an actionable, personalized planning tool that deepened audience relationships
Only In Your State has built a loyal audience by curating hyper-local travel experiences, but engagement remained largely passive—users would read about destinations, then leave the site to plan their trips elsewhere.
Meanwhile, travel and outdoor brands were eager to reach this engaged audience but needed more immersive sponsorship opportunities beyond standard display ads or affiliate links.
Understanding the Explorer Mindset
We needed to understand how users planned trips and what would make them stay on-site. Through research and working closely with stakeholders, we designed an interactive, quiz-based onboarding flow that guided users to personalized recommendations.
The Itinerary Planner allowed users to input their preferences—such as location, trip type, and duration—to generate a tailored travel plan using Only In Your State’s existing content. Ford’s sponsorship was embedded within the tool, featuring:
• Sponsored road trip collections highlighting scenic drives ideal for Ford vehicles
• Branded placements that felt like a natural part of the travel planning experience
• Ford Sponsorship: Ford took over the experience with branded trip collections, strategic placements, and an emphasis on road trip-friendly vehicle rentals
• Audible Integration: Nested within Itinerary results, offering audiobook recommendations for road trips + free trials
• Local Business Features: Routes and Itineraries highlighted small businesses & attractions, creating opportunities for future hyper-local partnerships
Project Highlights
Huge spike in engagement & retentio: more users stayed on the site to plan full trips rather than just reading articles
Ford extended their partnership for another year: originally launched with Itineraries, they expanded to include Routes due to it's success
The success of Ford’s partnership integration led to Audible joining as sponsor, proving that monetization could be deeply integrated into the user experience
