yugyo to Operate the English-Language Tourism Site for West Japan — Winning on "Dwell Time" with Storeeel
Turning the "94% Gap" into West Japan's Upside
Roughly 80% of inbound travelers — especially those from Europe, the US, and Australia — concentrate on the so-called "Golden Route" from Tokyo to Osaka and Kyoto. Meanwhile, only about 5.8% visit West Japan and Kyushu. Seen the other way, this region holds a vast, untapped upside of more than 94%.
yugyo inc. has been entrusted with operating and maintaining "Japan West Golden Route," the English-language tourism site connecting 20 municipalities across West Japan and Kyushu. In this project, for which Fukuoka City serves as secretariat, we handle everything end to end — from infrastructure operations such as server maintenance and security to UX improvements, AIO/SEO, editorial workflows, and coordination with each municipality.
Delivering Information to the "Real Target" in Europe, the US, and Australia
At the outset, a simple but essential problem emerged: despite being an English site, about 77% of access came from within Japan. In other words, information was not yet reaching the Western travelers we most wanted to serve. So we are rebuilding the site's foundations — organizing structured data, metadata, and multilingual hreflang across all 293 pages so that search engines and AI can accurately grasp what is written where. Anticipating the era of generative AI search, we are also rebuilding for AIO with FAQ structured data, llms.txt, and more, so AI is more likely to cite the site.
Winning on "Dwell Time" with Storeeel
A defining feature of this project is our partnership with Storeeel. Storeeel embeds an Instagram Reels- or Stories-like UI directly into a website. By presenting vertical videos and images in a "just one more" flow, it layers an immersive, dwell-worthy experience onto pages that were once text-heavy. We arrange the appeal of West Japan — landscapes, festivals, food — in the order that resonates most, and connect each to a concrete next step (CTA) such as "See Shimonoseki's scenic spots" or "Book a Beppu hot spring."
Early Signs — the Data Is Starting to Move
Since introducing Storeeel, average dwell time has grown from about 30 seconds to about 47 seconds — roughly 1.5×. On the search side, traffic that had been declining through April and May began to reverse and edge upward after the June improvements. It is still only one or two months in, and the numbers have yet to fully materialize — but our hypothesis, that we can lengthen dwell time, is already showing as a real, early sign. This year we will continue to redesign model routes and branding content, expand on-the-ground features by overseas creators, and strengthen coordination with municipalities (now 20, with Yanagawa City newly joining this year).
Continuing to Share Information That Makes People Truly Want to Go
We have connected the Western marketing insights cultivated through digital nomad attraction to regional tourism and relational population building. On "Japan West Golden Route", too, rather than simply increasing traffic, we aim for a site where visitors can picture time spent as their true selves in a place. We will bring everything we know about web marketing to deliver the appeal of West Japan and Kyushu to the world.