Modern Travel Guidebook Website

ModernOverland.com Website

Site description:

- ModernOverland.com is an online travel guidebook (it will provide all of the content for free, but also sell the digital download and paper guidebooks).

- The will have all of the information contained in the printed travel guidebook (descriptions, maps and lists of sights & activities, places to stay, places to eat, ect. for each city)

- It will have a community user forum / message board where users can sign in and post questions or answer questions posted by other guests

Site design/style:

- Modern Overland should have a "modern" fresh feel with an intuitive interface.

- Here are some sites that I feel have aspects of the design/style we are looking for:

- By far the best example that I can find: http://www.ekoventure.com/

- The rest have a fresh/clean/modern look but not as fresh as the above:

http://www.ruzoo.com/

http://www.sharify.it/

http://envato.com/

http://creattica.com/

http://www.mint.com/

Design should be 1,000px wide

Site color: please use a green or blue as the main color theme of the site

Logo: Feel free to use anything at the moment I will have a logo ready toard the end of this project and will post it as soon as I have it.

Navigation:

- I envision two navigation sections 1) Main Horizontal Navigation on top, and 2) Vertical navigation on side where the user can navigate (Province, City, Places to Stay, Places to Eat, Transport, ect)

- On the top Horizontal Navigation the headers should be: Home | Destinations | Community Forum | Hotels & Hostels | Travel Tools

(there should also be a Search Box on top)

- Verticle Navigation will be an expandable/collapseable navigation menu. For design purposes you can use the following for the verticale navigation: (the >>> are used for indentation purposes only)

>Mpumalanga

>>Nelspruit

>>Barberton

>>Hazyview

>>Sabie

>>>Tourist Info

>>>Sights & Activities

>>>Places to Stay

>>>Places to Eat

>>>Gettin There & Away

>>Graskop

>>Pilgrim's Rest

>>Dullstroom

>>Lydenberg

Main Body of Front Page:

- A map of South Africa with individual provinces that the user will be able to click on (some sample maps of South Africa are attached for convenience purposes only, feel free to use them or any other South Africa map)

- A flash video that will play some of the countries highlights and invite users to explore the site (some sample maps of Video stills are attached for convenience purposes only, feel free to use any video image/player)

Sidebar Boxes:

- Please include sidebar boxes with catching "call to action" buttons

- Box 1: Modern Overland South Africa Guidebook

Photo of the guidebook (use book as placement)

Modern links/image for 1) buy the paper book, 2) download the PDF, 3) Download to iPhone, 3) Download to Amazon Kindle, 4)...more formats

[Call to action button]

- Box 2: Make it Easy with the GPS Guidebook

Photo of Garmin GPS unit showing directions (some sample GPS images are attached for convenience purposes only, feel free to use them or any other GPS image)

Text: Make your trip Easy with the Modern Overland Garmin 1200 GPS. It is preprogramed with all of the points of interest and displays the text reviews from the book.

- Box 3: Make the Right Choice

A large "10%" image

Text: 10% of the profits from Modern Overland guidebook sales go back to the region that the guidebook covers through ModernOverland.org, which helps fianace education with the belief that in the long term, education is the single best solution to reducing poverty and promoting peace and prosperity.

- Box 4: Feedback / Suggestions (not necessarily a box) but something that sticks out, see http://www.ekoventure.com/ for what I mean)

I want this to appear throughout the site so that users can always click and tell us what they think

Navigation reminder: (to show current location and easy navigation back). For example if the user is looking at Restaurants in Sabie the "reminder navigation" would be located under the header section and look like the following where the user could click back to any previous section:

Home -> Destinations -> South Africa -> Mpumalanga -> Sabie -> Places to Eat

Footer: a different shade/color for secondary navigation links: About Us | Work for us | Press, media & advertising | Website Terms

Also, please include logo (or a shaded version) somewhere in the footer section

Thanks for taking a look at this project and I look forward to seeing the concepts.