A Hawaii travel site for Japanese readers

Background

Minna no Aloha-chan is a Japanese-language YouTube channel for people planning a trip to Hawaii, with a companion website at alohachan.com. Filming, editing and publishing are all carried out in-house. According to the channel’s media kit, about 57% of viewers are aged 55 or older, so the videos and the site are written for people who want practical details such as directions, prices and senior discounts.

What we built

From video to article

When a new video is published on YouTube, an article is created on the website. Articles are written from the content of the video, with headings, still images selected from the video, shop information with map links, and structured data for search engines.

Links in both directions

Each video description links to the matching article, where viewers can find maps, prices and directions, and each article links back to its video.

Guides and seasonal pages

18 guides cover individual areas and topics in depth. Pages for annual events, such as the Honolulu Marathon and Aloha Festivals, keep the same address from year to year and are updated with each year’s schedule. Twelve monthly pages list the events held in that month together with average weather data from NOAA.

Navigation

Every article ends with suggestions for further reading, drawn from guides in the same category and the newest articles. The home page was reorganized so that new articles, videos and guides each have a clear entry point, and a separate page lists all new articles.

Planning from search data

New articles are planned from Google Search Console data, based on what readers are searching for.

Applying this to client work

The tools and methods described here were developed for our own site first. We use the same approach when planning, writing and maintaining websites for clients.