It’s official. We’ve only been live a short while and we’ve already received our first award. We’re super excited about what we have built, and about making the best experience of renting a vacation home easier and safer for renters and property managers.

Since I am the designer here, at PickPackGo, it was up to me to take the lead in creating our site look and feel. Our team approached our site design knowing that today’s web users want fast, relevant information delivered in easily discernible ways or we’ll lose them. When we looked at other online vacation travel sites, they fell short—most offering drab, cluttered, text-heavy sites that can be very frustrating to navigate. Users deserve better.

Branding: In order to successfully meet travelers’ needs, we’ve designed a site where our users can easily find, compare and rent vacation homes. Our brand is simple. A warm, welcoming color treatment and use of fun font types sets us apart in an otherwise corporate, predictable sites of our industry.

Design: Our site consists of clean, airy page layouts, easy-to-read large fonts, bright, bold colors and a splash of fun graphics such as in the following page examples:

Personable approach: It was also important for us to bring a down-home element to our site. What better way than City Hosts who are locals in their cities? We wanted this area to be informative, as well as upbeat and inviting, so I introduced picturesque avatars for each city, as well as a City Host personality. When we add your city, let me what ideas you have for your city’s avatar.

Stay tuned: Since our launch, we have been steeped in testing and revisions, and we are working on implementing new features such as sharing favorites and reviews. Come back soon and see for yourself.

We hope you’ll find our site refreshingly easy to navigate—and even enjoyable. We know you just want to find your vacation rental and be done with it. Me, too. As we continue to improve our site design, I welcome input on what you would like to see or how we can make it better!