Measuring impact5 min read
Evidence a BID can take to a ballot
Heritage and retail trails get filed under nice-to-have at renewal. How to produce footfall evidence that survives a room of sceptical levy payers.
For BIDs, destinations, national parks and heritage bodies
Self-guided journeys, under your own name.
Write a journey through your town, coast or park and see who finishes it.
People walk it.
Visitors open your journey from a link on their phone. At each stop they check in and collect a stamp, and finishing earns a badge. It gives people a reason to reach the next stop.
Every check-in is evidence a leaflet could never give you: how many people started, where they dropped off, how long they spent at each stop, and when they came. The numbers your board, your funders or your levy payers will ask for.
Three parts. One licence.
Publish
Drop stops on a map, add your words, pictures or audio, press publish. Your comms officer can do it on a Tuesday afternoon.
- Walking distances calculate themselves
- Fixed order, or leave it open
- Change a stop without asking anyone
Measure
Completion rates, drop-off points, dwell time per stop, patterns by day and hour. The numbers your board asks for, ready before the meeting.
- Which stop loses people
- Dwell time, stop by stop
- CSV export for your annual report
Network
Optional distribution to Pilgrim, our own walking platform, when you want your journey found by people who aren’t looking for you yet.
- Your branding travels with it
- Opt in per journey
- Paid journeys, money to you
The problem
You already have a trail. You just can’t prove anyone walks it.
Most places have a heritage walk, a town trail, a route round the park. Nearly all of them exist as a PDF, a leaflet, or a page nobody has updated since 2019. None of them tell you how many people started, where they gave up, or whether it was worth doing.
From idea to a funded plan
Good ideas need a grounded plan.
Funding a trail means more than paying for launch. Explore how to build a credible case, understand the full cost and plan for the people who will keep it running.
Funding guide
Where the money for a trail actually comes from
The realistic funding routes for a walking or heritage trail in the UK, what each one will and won't pay for, and the capital-versus-revenue trap that sinks applications.
Budget checklist
What a self-guided trail actually costs
What a heritage or town trail costs over five years: boards, leaflets and digital compared honestly, including the costs almost nobody budgets for.
Evaluation guide
Proving a trail worked once the funding has gone
What a funder actually asks for at the end of a trail project, what's genuinely measurable, and how to set evaluation up before you build rather than after.
Start with the project, not the pot. Funding criteria and deadlines change; always check current guidance with the funder.
Placemaking6 min read
Moving visitors off the honeypot
Dispersal usually means a map and hope. What actually moves visitors to a quieter route, and the village that ends up paying for it when it half works.
Measuring impact6 min read
Proving a trail worked once the funding has gone
What a funder actually asks for at the end of a trail project, what's genuinely measurable, and how to set evaluation up before you build rather than after.
Twenty minutes, your route, no slides.
Tell us about a walk you already promote and we’ll show you what it looks like as a Waymarker journey. If it isn’t a fit, we’ll say so on the call.