Travelodge website goes from pretty good to shameful

Anagoge

Senior Member
I meant Travelodge. Not Premier Inn. Damnit.

So this week, Travelodge have relaunched their website. Their old design was actually not that bad at all. This one looks like it's been a case of design by committee, right down to the oversized "Start here" button.

This is their old website: Travelodge
This is their new website: Travelodge

I think you'll agree someone ought to get fired.
 
Designing by committee, marketing said, people say they are confused by the site layout and don't know how to make a booking. The cleaner said, I have never understood why you don't have more pictures on the front page....

It was a joke, listening to everyones opinion even the cleaner.
 
Thread title edited Neil :)
I'm not overly convinced by their copywriting either, things like 'Everything you need (and nothing you don't) for a good nights sleep'

Any website that has 'Click here to book using our old website' doesn't have much confidence in their new site?!
 
I should add I think theyre both ****, but the new ones definately.... less ****.
 
I can give you the inside scoop on this, actually. I worked on the old site (it was my main project when I worked at <my old agency>).
 
N.B. The following is off-the-record and was not authorised/permitted/endorsed/instigated by anyone other than myself. These words are my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of anyone else.

Okay so I used to work at <my old agency>. We ran the old Travelodge website.

The site's front-end was designed and coded by an agency in London, then we at <my old agency> in Leeds did the back-end build (well, we actually rewrote the London agencies front-end too, we managed to get the entire site's CSS file to 17Kb smaller than the other agency's home.css file, but that's by-the-by).

This carried on and Travelodge were <my old agency>'s best client, our main breadwinner. London agency did the creative, we did the build.

Travelodge then employed a new head of online marketing or whatever his official title was and his first statement of 'I'm in charge now' was to take the work from us and move it in-house to a far far inferior team (hence the ugly, half-arsed state of the site now).

So yeah, the site was taken from a mediocre set of designers and arguably one of the UK's best technical development agencies and all moved in-house where it's been rebuilt on inferior technology and looks/works far far worse.

Kind of a ****ter really, but that's politics for you!
 
Let's hope that when they start losing traffic to their site and see that Premier Inn is getting more, they'll come running back to you.
 
Let's hope that when they start losing traffic to their site and see that Premier Inn is getting more, they'll come running back to Harry Roberts, CSS extraordinaire!
 
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