Gaylord Hotels Site Redesign

The Gaylord Hotels web sites were completed under Ryan's leadership at Sway, in partnership with Gaylord's advertising agency, and a development team from Fusion Productions. Gaylord Hotels is a family of resort and convention centers with properties in Orlando, FL, Nashville, TN, and Grapevine, TX. Prior to working with Sway, each property had developed its own web site, at different times, with different functionality and different looks. TBC Advertising, the agency of record for Gaylord Hotels, asked Sway to integrate these disparate sites with the look of a new umbrella brand advertising campaign they had developed. Before the re-design process began, Sway was presented with several restrictions from Gaylord's technology provider, Fusion, who was pre-contracted to handle back-end development. The existing site architecture for th Orlando property was to serve as the site architecture for all of the properties, without any changes permitted. The basic layout of the page and dimensions of navigation and header areas were also pre-determined. Despite these constriants, Sway was able to design an interface that met the technolog providers specifications, while simultaneously addressing some of the usability issues present in the existing sites. Sway's new design clearly distinguishes and prioritizes different types of information. Before, the interface mixed different types of content together. In order to maximize navigability,the new design divides the page into four key interface areas, each with a different objective. The top of the page enables the user to easily identify which sub-section of the site is being viewed, the lower left enables users to jump to other properties' sites and the right column enables users to find content related to what is being viewed in the main body of the page. The interface also presents key actionable information (such as numbers to call for reservations or links to buy tickets online) in aconsistent location on every page. The new design leveraged some of the key elements of the advertising campaign, but translated them for best effect online. The advertising treatment also included a beveled gold bars for headlines, and parchment paper backgrounds, two effects that don't transition well online. Sway's clean design is clearly consistent with the brand look created by TBC but medium-appropriate. The result is a high-end, polished site consistent with the state-of-the art facilities and luxurious accommodations that Gaylord Hotels offers.