Nelson Civic Theatre Society
We captured the pulse of film and community, shaping a brand that reflected Nelson’s creative spirit + the transformative magic of cinema.
Oak Bay Beach Hotel
INTRODUCTION
Redefining Luxury Online: Elevating Oak Bay Beach Hotel’s Digital Experience
The Oak Bay Beach Hotel in Victoria, BC is world-renowned for its stunning views, gracious hospitality, and top-of-the-line amenities. From curated dining experiences to luxurious spas, the hotel offered a comfortable and elegant respite for local and international travelers to the coast of Vancouver Island.
Unfortunately, the hotel’s beauty and refinement lacked a digital counterpart. When online experiences became amplified due to the global pandemic, it became apparent that the website left much to be desired. Hamstrung by a rigid template, Oak Bay’s website had become a Frankenstein of plugins and third-party tools cobbled together to create a less-than-ideal experience for both internal and external users. It was time for a redesign – one that would finally showcase the hotel’s exquisite experience online.
Translating Oak Bay’s Elegance into a Digital Experience with Thoughtful Design
Successfully translating real-world aesthetics into a digital experience depends on the details. Through style tile concepts, we worked with Oak Bay’s team to land on a perfect combination of palette, typography, and visual language that would communicate the same feeling of walking through the hotel’s beautiful architecture. The use of ample white space connoted a sense of airiness and openness. A slightly muted palette helped to create a relaxing and peaceful impression on users. And a strong use of imagery helped to convey the allure of the hotel at every opportunity.
Streamlining the Experience
Part of Oak Bay’s frustration with the website was its navigation. A cluttered main navigation with critical information buried on pages meant that customers continuously called the hotel with questions that could easily be answered on the website. Long pages with rigid blocks of content meant that key details about reservation policies, booking information, and COVID-19 guidelines were relegated to hard-to-find areas.
To simplify things, Takt went back to the core journeys of Oak Bay’s users. Users either needed to book a stay, visit the spa, host an event, or reserve a table. These became the pillars of the website’s navigation under which the various offerings of the hotel were organized. To facilitate easy navigation, pages featured links to other relevant content so that users could easily find their way if they got lost. Finally, Takt created a “What You Should Know” and an FAQ section on each page to answer the most commonly asked questions and hopefully save the hotel a few phone calls!
Empowering Oak Bay’s Team with Flexible, Easy-to-Use Content Tools
A website is only as successful as the people who manage it. We wanted to make sure that the Oak Bay team had the flexibility to continue to develop content and grow the website as they added new amenities and offerings. From the beginning of the process, we worked with Oak Bay to understand their biggest pain points with the current website authoring experience. By offering a variety of content modules and page templates, Massive ensured that Oak Bay could easily add new pages and reorganize content without sacrificing consistency, performance, and design.
Bringing it All to Life
Careful image selection, inspiring copy, and the meticulous connection of all of Oak Bay’s third-party tools resulted in a stunning new experience that finally represented what hotel guests experienced on site. There was now a robust and beautiful digital home that guests could turn to for easy-to-find, reliable information about the hotel. Needless to say, both the Massive team and the Oak Bay team were thrilled with the final result.
