Flow strives to grow, innovate and keep up with the latest industry developments in our projects. So, when we were given the exciting opportunity to produce a brand-new website for Verde Hotels towards the end of last year, Flow pulled out all the stops to create an up-to-the-minute, interactive multisite, in line with the client’s requirements.
Long-time Flow client Hotel Verde Cape Town was the Verde Hotels group’s first hotel and is widely hailed for its green operations and carbon-neutral accommodation and conferencing. The group’s second hotel, Hotel Verde Zanzibar – Azam Luxury Resort and Spa, opened in early 2018, and the group aims to manage 30 establishments by 2030.
“Before, there were essentially three separate brands and a different website to go with each. The task at hand was to consolidate all these under one master brand – Verde Hotels,” explains Flow’s Cape Town manager, Sarah-Jane Viljoen.
“The business offers a turnkey solution for property and hotel developers, and the new site needed to service the current hotels, as well as any hotels acquired in future.”
After Flow developed a brand blueprint in collaboration with the client, the designers set about translating it in a way that would ensure consistency when it came to the overall look and content of the new website.
The aim was to design a clean, fresh, contemporary-looking multisite with a consistent template system for each of the hotels. Most importantly, the site needed to drive sales, while showcasing the Verde Hotels experience. The Flow team also had to consider best practice in terms of search-engine and mobile optimisation.
“We started using Craft 3 [the latest, more scalable version of the Craft CMS content management system] late last year and Bootstrap 4 [the newest version of this grid framework to build templates], so it was pretty new and exciting stuff,” says Flow head of digital Richard Frank.
Our old way of creating multisites was pretty challenging, so we welcomed the great new features on Craft 3. The developers had to ensure that the site reflected the designer’s vision and that the mobile version was user-friendly and looked as good as the desktop site.
Throughout the project, Flow’s team worked closely with Verde Hotels executive Calvin Boia, who says, “We needed to consolidate our communication to speak with one voice as Verde Hotels, while still offering some customisation to convey the image and personality of each of our properties.
“It was good to understand our brand objectives and brand architecture before building a site that needed to be future-focused for our fast-growing business,” he adds.
Flow is proud of the modern, user-friendly new Verde Hotels site, and looks forward to producing more beautiful, interactive sites to help our valued clients achieve their business goals.