I recently completed a little website design project for Arabella Hotels & Resorts. This mini-site is more of an entrance into their main websites for each specific resort and needed to give a brief showcase of each resorts. The best way to showcase places like resorts and spa’s online are pictures which reflect the atmosphere, spaces, relaxation so that would-be visitors can transport themselves into the space and take themselves on a little mental journey. People want to know where they’re going to be spending that valuable relaxation time and need to be transported in the atmosphere they’re looking for. This is true as well for advertising properties for sale whether it’s residential or commercial. Seeing something and getting a real sense of the space and the surroundings makes a world of a difference.
I coded this site using XHTML & CSS with as many web standards as possible but due to time constraints and scope changes I must admit there’s a few tables being used in the html. The nice thing about this page is that even though all images are in flash, all text loads very quickly and the SEO friendliness of the textual content is quit good, with a nice semantically correct hierarchy of content, ie. menus are lists and headers in their H1 & 2 tags. I did advise the client against placing all the venue visuals in flash as the initial loading prevents visitors seeing the venues as quickly as possible.
I quite enjoyed this little project as it gave me some time to craft some nice little interface goodness which I haven’t done for a while. The elegance and luxury of the venues comes through with the soft shiny gradient. I did find the curly font a little difficult to work with in this case as it makes the main headline a little illegible.
All in all though I’m happy and learnt a few little CSS tricks along the way. This project was developed through a new media agency in Cape Town(not telling who) but all the work was done by yours truly.
What do you think of this Design?