- Innovation Consulting
- Research
- UI/UX Audit
- Stakeholders workshop
- Rapid prototyping
Watsons Bay Hotel
Watsons Bay Hotel, set on the sandy seashore of one of Sydney’s most remarkable harbour beaches, is renowned for its postcard vista. The mesmerizing views of the blue harbor during the day, and the sunset view in the evening, are the star attractions of the hotel. The hotel is also known for its premier accommodation, beach life, life celebrations, weddings, and team trips.
Industry: Hospitality
Project type: Website
Our role in the project
User experience
Design
- UI/UX Design
- Visual design
- Website design
- User testing
- User engagement testing
Development
- HTML/CSS/JS
- Wordpress theme development
Post-Launch
- Stakeholders workshop
- Product strategy
- User testing
- User engagement testing
Project overview
The website for Watsons Bay Hotel needed an overhaul that would breathe new life into the brand by creating a design that was aesthetically pleasing, while still being streamlined and easy to navigate. It was paramount that the services of Watsons Bay Hotel were conveyed to visitors in a visually engaging way, leaving users with a strong positive impression. EB Pearls came up with a design that was able to satisfy both the website visitors and the client.
User Problems
User Problems
The major goal when recreating the website, was to fascinate users who were looking to enjoy luxurious accommodation and organise events in Watson Bay Hotel’s pristine location.
The end product was developed with a minimalist design that used interactive pictures and thumbnails to depict the beauty of Watsons Bay Hotel and its surrounding areas.
User experience
Incorporating all the services of the Watsons Bay Hotel and making it intuitive as possible for the user, was one of the key goals for our UX designer. Analysing the offerings and the target audience for each offering, we outline a user journey for each customer section and outline a wireframe and user journey map. Then, we conducted user testing on our low-fidelity prototype.
Design Sprint
Design Sprint
Based on the interactive wireframe and considering the persona of the user, our design team created a design concept for Watsons Bay Hotel. It was an interactive and collaborative session with the client, where we were able to complete the entire design of the website in 1 design sprint.
Internal Testing
Internal Testing
To get feedback and improve further, internal testing was done. After the testing, the most important part was easy navigation, allowing users to reach their desired screen, as well as the uniformity in the screens.
Highlights
- Web Design Through Visual Immersion: A visually engaging aesthetic. The prime reason why people use the Watsons Bay Hotel for holidays and events is its pristine location and luxurious accommodation. The website needed to show this. To accomplish this, it was important to engage visitors through an immersive visual design that did not overwhelm the user with too much information. The end product was a minimalist design that used subtly interactive pictures and thumbnails to depict the beauty of Watsons Bay Hotel and its surrounding areas.
- Following modern and emerging design principles: It is important to convey all the services offered by Watsons Bay Hotel to the users without overwhelming the visitor. For the new Watsons Bay Hotel website, all unnecessary text content was removed in favour of a picture-orientated approach. The idea was to make the website seem more like a gallery where visitors scroll through a predefined and streamlined path. Overall, this redesign proved to be more fitting with the beauty of Watsons Bay Hotel and its surroundings.
Retrospective
EB Pearls has managed to breathe new life into the Watsons Bay Hotel by making the new website more visually-oriented and more immersive through a thoughtful redesign to match modern trends and design principles.
Next steps
Next steps
After the completion of the Watsons Bay Hotel website, we worked on several other hotel websites for Sydney Collective Group. We currently manage and enhance all the websites for Sydney Collective Group.
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