Minnesota’s got stuff going on. From its tight-knit Twin Cities communities bursting with culture, music, museums and fine arts galore, to the quiet of the Boundary Waters and North Shore, the hustle of the Mall of America, and the wonders of more than 60 state parks.
Explore Minnesota has recently seen a surge in user activity on its website as potential visitors discover the “Star of the North.” Thanks to the organization’s award-winning website redesign, the time of the average user session increased by more than 80%; AI search visibility grew from 26 million to more than 115 million, placing Explore Minnesota first in its top five state competitive set; and its accessibility and core web vitals are achieving a near-perfect score.
For its efforts, Explore Minnesota received a WebAward for Outstanding Website from the Web Marketing Association. The competition is the premier award recognition program for website developers and the online marketing community.
Explore Minnesota was also a finalist in the U.S. Travel Association’s ESTO Awards for its standout destination marketing initiative “Come Visit Your Neighbors in Minnesota.” The initiative highlighted Minnesota’s resilience and values around inclusion and aimed to drive visitors to local businesses impacted by Operation Metro Surge, a coordinated federal immigration enforcement operation beginning in late 2025 and intensifying through early 2026.
Both the website redesign and the neighbors initiative reflected Explore Minnesota’s “Star of the North” brand, aimed at attracting visitors from around the world and recruiting top talent to relocate to Minnesota.
Among the Explore Minnesota team leading the organization’s website redesign and marketing campaigns is Senior Graphic Designer Melanie Graves, a Master of Fine Arts in design student at UW-Stout Polytechnic. Graves designs national ads for Explore Minnesota, creates content for its social media accounts and helps to produce the annual Minnesota Travel Guide.
“Destination marketing, at its best, is not about selling a place. It is about reflecting a place honestly and inviting people into it. For years, Explore Minnesota has been building the “Star of the North” brand around exactly that principle: authentic storytelling, real community voices, and a commitment to showing Minnesota as it actually is rather than as a marketing construct,” Graves said.
Redesigning Explore Minnesota
As AI search began to impact organic traffic, Explore Minnesota’s goals to keep users on-site longer and to provide a faster, more seamless user experience were paramount to the website redesign.
Keeping its core audiences top-of-mind, the organization internally designed a refreshed website that kept the same essential infrastructure but completely overhauled the user experience and visual look and feel, aligning with its current branding and fully integrating its “Star of the North” campaign.
“As the digital world quickly evolves to be algorithmic and AI-centered, Explore Minnesota recognizes that destination websites must evolve with it. But instead of chasing trends, we gathered direct feedback from users about their experiences with the website, analyzed user behavior to better understand how people interact with it, and used those insights to create a more intuitive, accessible experience that better meets their needs,” Graves said.
Creating an impression: Master's in design student’s typography featured in international textbook
Continue ReadingTwo years before the redesign began, Explore Minnesota engaged in a wraparound analysis of its site performance. This combined direct feedback from website visitors with behavioral insights to understand how people interacted with the site, where they encountered challenges, and how Explore Minnesota could improve navigation, content organization and overall design.
“By combining these methods, we were able to discern how different users used our site, where they got stuck, what worked well, and where we had opportunities to improve the overall experience,” said Graves, who conducted a survey of Explore Minnesota email subscribers as part of her coursework for the Improving the User Experience Certificate at UW-Stout Polytechnic. “I used the findings from that research, along with input from the Explore Minnesota digital team, to inform a more user-focused and accessible design.”
From that process, with Graves taking on the visual element of the redesign, Explore Minnesota upgraded its website to include clear navigation and uplift the most popular destinations and attractions to the forefront.
Designed for potential travelers and new residents, businesses, and Minnesotans who explore the website often, the website’s “top hits” are easily searchable and offer in-depth, robust content. The website is also both desktop- and mobile-friendly.
“As AI continues to change how people find and engage with information online, our new website provides a stronger foundation to meet their needs. It makes it easier for users to find the information they’re looking for, explore what Minnesota has to offer, and discover experiences they might not have known about before,” Graves said.
‘Come Visit Your Neighbors in Minnesota’
Explore Minnesota’s “Come Visit Your Neighbors in Minnesota” initiative was recognized among U.S. Travel Association’s Bridging Communities Award nominees. The initiative was created in response to the social and economic disruption to communities across the state caused by Operation Metro Surge.
Estimated damages to the Minneapolis economy alone exceeded $203 million, with $106 million in lost wages in the metro area. But the impact was not confined to urban areas. Explore Minnesota’s own February 2026 survey data found that half of the businesses reporting impacts were located outside the Twin Cities, in northeast, southern, central, and northwest Minnesota.
“Even in challenging moments, Minnesotans showed what it means to be good neighbors. Across the state, communities came together to support one another, demonstrating the resilience and sense of connection that make Minnesota special,” Graves said.
For the initiative, Explore Minnesota leveraged in-house creative production capabilities, collaborated with community voices, and targeted national media to reach both traditional regional markets and new national audiences. The campaign ran alongside the existing regional spring and summer tourism campaign and delivered engagement across social, out-of-home and earned channels.
The campaign ran messages on six high-profile digital billboard units in New York’s Times Square; Boston; Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; Seattle; and Portland, Oregon. A short film captured the meaning of neighborism (a word coined by Adam Serwer of The Atlantic) and featured real places and real people.
The team also created an organic “love letter to Minnesota” social video paired with a message of support. The first line read: “Immigrants are an integral part of Minnesota,” and the send-off was “We Love You, Minnesota,” written in the languages of the top five immigrant groups in the state, as well as Dakota and Ojibwe.
Its organic social media posts on Instagram hit nearly 295,000 views in less than two weeks, and on the paid social side, the campaign generated 885,488 impressions.
“With engagement rates nearly six times industry benchmarks, this campaign helped cement Minnesota as the most welcoming destination in the United States at the very moment the rest of the country was watching. More than a crisis response, the campaign affirmed that Minnesota’s brand and its strength comes from its people. It let the people of Minnesota share what they are made of and why we are the ‘Star of the North,’” Graves said.
In 2025, Graves’ design “Create” was selected among international submissions for the second edition of the textbook “Mastering Type: The Essential Guide to Typography for Print and Digital Design” by Professor Denise Bosler at Kutztown University. Graves’ design was one of 272 designs, representing artists from 36 countries.
Graves designed “Create” as part of an exercise in illustrated typography in her Digital Illustration class, led by Professor Erik Evensen. It was also showcased in the 2023 Art on Hennepin Avenue, a Minneapolis public art festival sponsored by Hennepin Arts.
“Melanie’s growth as a student mirrors the growth she's had concurrently in her professional career. She came into M.F.A. design program as an excellent, seasoned designer, and I've been watching her transform over the years into a creative thought leader,” Evensen said.
The M.F.A. in design is part of UW-Stout Polytechnic’s School of Art and Design, one of the largest public art schools in the Midwest. It offers bachelor’s degrees in animation and digital media; game design and development-art; graphic design and interactive media; illustration; industrial and product design; interior design; studio art; arts administration and entrepreneurship; fashion design and development; and video production.
