santorini.net website redesign

santorini.net

santorini.net is a very popular website but too old. It includes a lot of interesting information for Santorini Island, Greece, and links to many useful websites. The problem is, you have to really understand the website in order to find the information you need, and unfortunately this is very hard with the current design and layout. We have therefore restructured the layout (find new basic navigation attached - this is not final, we are open to suggestions) and are posting this contest to you, that we trust will find the best design for us.

Having a limited budget for this project, we are offering the prepaid amount through 99 designs PLUS 2 free nights in Heliotopos Hotel in Santorini (hotel.heliotopos.net), breakfast included, for the tourist periods of 2010 or 2011 (upon availability).

Target audience is anyone who is interested in Santorini Island, Greece; tourists, fans, travelers, residents. It is a very old site that ranks first in Google and has over 2000 visits per day.

There will be advertising banners in there so the website needs to support the quality of content to make users stay and browse. To give quality the content is not enough though, we need a clear and easy to navigate presentation as well!

We need three page types: Home, Inside and Live Webcam (described in the "developing issues" file attached)

Please design the home page to start with. We will provide regular feedback. We are open to suggestions for colors and layout. Our only real restrictions are the number and size of ads and the live webcam.

Photography: use photos from our website, if you need anything in HQ let us know

Websites we like (for inspiration not guidelines):
http://www.maldivestourism.net/ : simple and easy to navigate & find your way around. Design-wise not that good but we like the white background for the amount of info we have
http://www.visitbritain.com : we like the design but not the fact that it’s so bloated. Also,too much scrolling that we want to avoid

We have attached:
a) a copy of our logo – we need to keep the “www.santorini.net” but you are free to redesign the logo if you find it necessary. We are ok with it, and it has been like that for more than a decade. In the header we also need to include “Santorini Island, Greece”, not necessarily in the logo, just keep it in mind
b) developing issues: information on width, height, column restrictions, amount/size of ads in each page etc.
c) basic navigation (a basic navigation for the site but this is very flexible and can be altered to suit a great design. i.e. if you think 'photos' is better as a button, just do it)