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Nestled on the Greek island of Lefkada, Villa Lemoni is a premiere vacation destination, offering its guests luxury accommodations, as well as easy access to great food, beautiful beaches, and a wide variety of fun activities. The challenge we faced at the start of this project was that the villa was the island’s best kept secret. Our task was to elevate its brand and positioning as one of the island’s top vacation experiences.
As we familiarized ourselves with Lefkada, Villa Lemoni, and its competitors, we knew there was absolutely a way for us to have our cake and eat it, too. Not only could we have a functionally-robust website, chocked full of information about the villa. We could also provide visitors with a taste of what it would be like to experience the island, in a way that the competition hadn’t.
In order to do that, however, we first had to learn everything there was to know about what it was that made Villa Lemoni special. Not only that, but we also needed to look at other properties around the island. What did they have to offer, and what were they lacking? We wanted to know what these properties were doing to present themselves to potential customers. What did their websites offer? What were they doing to help clients plan their stay on the island? We wanted to look at all those things, and then do them better. But more than that, we wanted to raise the bar. How would the villa compare with the premier luxury brands of the world, like a Ritz Carlton or a Four Seasons?
The experience we wanted to create for Villa Lemoni’s guests all started with the logo. We needed a simple, elegant mark that would set the tone for the rest of the website’s look and feel.
Exhibit A: The logo.
From there, we pulled our color palette from photos of the property and the surrounding area, to give it a natural feel. We knew from the very beginning that the design would be extremely customized. Every detail you see on the page, all the way down to the maps, was thought out in advance and custom built. As a result, the technical interface is intuitive and easy-to-use.
Something that businesses in this industry have to be very aware of is the amount of information they put on their website. Many overdo it, which leads to an online experience that feels cluttered and hard to navigate. We did the opposite. We understood the need to present the user with information that didn’t overwhelm them, so we took a more visual approach, using pictures and graphics while keeping the words to a minimum. We broke the information into logical, smaller sections, allowing the reader to quickly find the content most relevant to them.
We used slightly more text in our description of the island, but our approach here remained the same. Most people would rather be looking at a beach as opposed to listening someone talk about one. So we let them look at the beach. The same goes for the local attractions, nearby destinations, and everything else you’d spend your time doing on the island. We wanted to show people as much as possible, stopping just short of buying them a plane ticket.
It was important to us that the website be easy to use not just for the guests, but for villa ownership as well. So, we put as much thought into the “backend” of the site as we did to the “frontend.” Whatever you’re doing, we wanted how you did it to be obvious. Whether it’s updating content on a page, uploading new photos to galleries or adding locations to the map, it can be done with a few clicks of a mouse. In addition, we incorporated a fully functional booking system which allows visitors to see available dates, pricing, make reservations and provide payment. On the backend, management is able to manage reservations, payments, and all communications in one place.
A website is a website is a website. Unless it’s not. We could have created a site that got the job done and looked exactly like a thousand other websites out there. That wasn’t good enough. Our client wanted to create an online experience that was reflective of the in-person experience at the villa. We were able to take their vision and interpret it through a logo, a website, and a system that provides just that – an elevated experience – for visitors and for the owners themselves.
In other words, wanted the website to be an extension of the villa itself, and to provide the user with a luxury experience, so that going on vacation didn’t feel like work.
