The Charming Inns Family Of Websites

Last week marked the fifth and final website launch for our wonderful friends and clients at Charming Inns. The entire team enjoyed a celebratory launch party this week, and our most sincere thanks and appreciation goes out to their crew for making this such a wonderful and productive process. To Rick, Linn, Michelle, Tim, Ellen and all the Charming employees….you’re the best and thanks for asking us to take this journey with you.

And what a great trip it’s been. We kicked off the collaboration where most successful development projects begin, by exploring the properties, brands, customers, reviews, benchmarking and more. From there we refined our goals, the overall strategy and the directional briefs for technology, creative, content, ongoing marketing and more. The most satisfying step during this early phase was working through the underlying essence of the Charming Inns brand and the individual property brands. Given the rich backstory of each Inn, and the Charming team’s baked-in passion for delivering exceptional experiences..we had plenty of material to work with. It was one of those cases where you just get out of the way and let it all shine.

From there we went to work developing a responsive (mobile optimized) website structure that could serve as a foundation for each distinct property website (with customized design and content for each brand) and the Charming Inns corporate website. Along the way we worked through rounds of info architecture models, style tiles, wireframes, interface designs, content development and application prototypes to get it all just right. The family of sites are all up and running, the early returns look good, and the collaborative efforts continue as Charming Inns moves upward and onwards. Happy travels!

And last, but not least, thanks and congrats to the extended “Blue Ion and friends” team who have worked so hard on the elements – Nicola, Katie, Brian, Craig, Chris, Casey, Jenny, Brennan, Josh, David, Rich and me!