Designing a Bilingual Website for a Dreamy Resort

Sonesta turned to us with an exciting vision: to honor Costa Sur Resort’s brand change with a fresh, bilingual digital experience in both English and Spanish. Their goals were to update the outdated UX and UI to better reflect the resort’s upscale positioning and to enhance user engagement on the site.

We worked closely with the client’s team and meticulously planned every detail to meet the challenging deadline of less than 30 days. Our team was set on delivering a modern, user-friendly website that aligned with Sonesta’s brand standards and lived up to the resort’s established reputation.

Before we delve into the specifics of the successful website redesign, let’s visually explore the transformation in this video.

The project presented three main challenges that required careful navigation on our end:

1. Tight Deadline: We faced the challenge of building the entire website from the ground up within a tight timeframe of under a month, a task that typically spans around three months.
2. Balancing Visual Identities: Another challenge was finding the right balance between Costa Sur Resort’s established visual identity and Sonesta’s recognizable brand elements. We worked to create a design that maintained the resort’s unique character while integrating Sonesta’s brand seamlessly.
3. A Seamless Bilingual Experience: From bilingual features to copy translations and specific booking engine integrations, we had to ensure that the website would provide a superior experience to global and Mexican users alike.

To bring the project to life, we tackled it in three main phases: planning, design, and development.

We started by analyzing the existing website, interviewing key stakeholders, and reviewing peer and competitor websites to create a detailed website plan that would save time during execution.

To deliver a compelling online presence for Costa Sur Resort, Classico Collection by Sonesta, we focused on both user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design.

For UX, we completely restructured the existing website to create a smooth conversion funnel for the key audience segments. We placed special focus on streamlining the navigation bar for smoother user journeys and on visual elements to spark wanderlust in our audience.

In terms of UI, we studied the existing website and Sonesta’s visual brand identity to create a design that highlights Costa Sur Resort, Classico Collection by Sonesta as a premier destination on the beautiful Mexican coast. The site features strategically placed videos and GIFs to add movement to the design.

We built a bilingual website using the subfolder approach, nesting both the English and Spanish versions under the same domain.

We’ve also incorporated engaging modules, SynXis integration, and website compliance.

Read our actionable guide to website compliance –>