As you may know, TemplateMonster is a solid company that does not talk at random being fully responsible for all the tasks assigned. That is the way it was with the website redesign of the Hotel ‘Goldener Baer’ in Vienna. Let’s brush it all up!
You may remember originally published post that cited the worst website designs of world hotels that are actually great. That caused a tide of moot points!
After having censured all those indeed unsuccessful design efforts, we decided to actually do something about it to change the course of the events. In fact, we offered our cost free redesign services to any of those websites that stroke the aforementioned list. The lucky one appeared to be ‘Goldener Baer’ hotel website!
So, we took up the deal, and that was enthralling, we should say. The new version of the website lived up to our expectations.
For now, allow us to remind you of what the initial look of the website we’ve redesigned was:
What we have done is that we completely modified the layout, including graphical design of subpages, coding, and the addition of new sections. And even that was not enough. The structure of the website as well required some functional changes. So, we worked on it a little bit having replenished it with extra texts, added an interactive map to show hotel location on Google Maps, user-friendly navigation menu, and much more. We’ve also added functional blocks that were supposed to be the important links to apply.
And what we have eventually received - there’s a world of difference! Have a look:
That is it! Not so long ago this project was successfully completed. So far as we have enlivened the discounts for Hotels category templates, it is appropriate to mention that supersonic redesign of ours!
Remember we’ve published a review of world’s top hotels’ websites that actually were not as good as these hotels? After having criticized them we decided to try to actually do something about this sad situation and here we are with what can become a new version of a ‘Goldener Baer’ hotel website (Vienna). By the way we were this close from having this surprise unveiled by one of the guys commenting that initial post. It’s a good thing we can now speak out loud about it. Anyways, please allow us to remind you guys of what was the website that we’ve redesigned:
Well, as you see the design is pretty much outdated and it’s hard to call it really functional. So, we’ve worked on it a little bit and here it is - changed and improved:
What did we do?
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Captain Revelation (as well as ourselves) has no rest since last Friday when we’ve discovered that so many of world’s top hosting companies neglect the importance of a website design. Think about it for a second: the companies providing websites and fighting for customers actually ignore their own corporate websites. Yeah, that is really something a design company like TemplateMonster may be worried about.
Take a look at a couple of hosting companies we are sure you all have heard of:
BlueHost.com
We don’t mean to be offensive, but this one kinda looks like these postcard-style websites popular back in late 1990s. And it seems to be optimized for what - 640 by 480 pixels screen resolution? In fact this design hasn’t been updated since 2003 - that’s a long time people! Time to do something about it!
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1and1.com Hosting
This one looks like a Christmas tree to us. It’s now that old though, that’s a good thing about it. However this kind of design approach does harm the functionality - it’s hard to navigate all these blocks.
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Little Prince once said: “You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.” Unfortunately people often forget this important truth. There are many abandoned creatures out there. While some can take care of themselves others, such as Havanese dogs, can’t. Luckily there are people who care for our little friends. There is such an organization - Havanese Rescue Inc. It is an independent charity organization that is not affiliated with any breed club but aims at giving home to as many Havanese dogs as possible.
So these guys have applied for a little help from TemplateMonster - they asked for a template that they would like to base their store on (they sell different goods to be able to keep helping their inmates). Well, providing it absolutely free of charge is the least that we could do for the noble work they’re doing. You can see it in the image below.
And this is what these guys have got as a result (available at HavToHavIt.com):
Havanese Rescue Inc is probably not the largest charity organization in the world and maybe they are not saving the whole Universe but they do make lives easier for those who depend on us. And TemplateMonster is proud to be a part of it all.
They say that there can never be too much of something good. Indeed, after having launched the “Changing the Web” global social responsibility campaign we decided that launching another similar project would also be a good idea. That’s when we came across the KillerStartUps.com project. When we saw what KillerStartUps was doing we decided to launch another campaign proudly entitled “Enhancing the Future Web.”
The idea was to cooperate with the KillerStartUps project in the following ways: they choose a “Killer of the Week” winner; Template Monster in turn offers one of the four winners of each month a free redesign opportunity. We then proceed just as we have in “Changing the Web” – providing premium design for the rookies. We can’t wait to see the happy faces of these promising newcomers when they see what we’ll do for their designs.
