Hotel Saint Cecilia

Take a large serving of southern hospitality, a half cup of irreverence and dash of Salinger-esque reclusion and you have the Hotel Saint Cecilia. Situated on a quiet street in the warm shadows of South Austin, it’s a refuge for travellers weary of the typical hotel experience.

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Hotel Saint Cecilia's previous website failed to express the true nature of the physical experience. For hotels with negligible personality this disconnect would have little effect. But for the Saint Cecilia, a hotel that has been meticulously designed right down to the cutlery, the problem demanded immediate attention. As design lead I took the following steps to improve the user experience and increase stickiness for mobile visitors.

Harmonizing the online world with the real one

The previous website focused heavily on graphics and neglected to showcase the nuanced detail of the spaces. The new design addressed this deficiency by putting photography at the center of the design, emphasizing a balance of wide angle to detail shots.

When a property has this much character it's important to let the images do the talking. Rather than rely on lengthy copy to describe the experience, we created a minimal design that tells the story through photographic arrangement. Great effort was taken in developing a comprehensive library of images and in their curation on the site.

Because the previous site was Flash based the hotel was forced to employ third party technology to properly serve mobile visitors. The new site was built on a responsive framework, eliminating the need for third party services and streamlining the experience across all devices.

We structured the site in a modular fashion so the Saint Cecilia team had the utmost flexibility in arranging page layout.