One Foot in Lisbon Before You Book: Tour Operator Website Design for Insidertime

Written for founders and marketing leads of tour, transfer and local experience companies planning a new website.

Most tour websites work like a price list. A row of excursions, a contact form, a stock photo of a tram. The trip itself starts later, at the airport.

Flatstudio gave the Insidertime website a second job. A visitor should feel one foot in Lisbon before booking anything.

What is the Insidertime website?

The Insidertime website is the public site of a tour operator in Portugal founded by Ukrainians. It presents private walking, car, boat and tuk tuk tours, transfers and custom trip planning, in English, Portuguese and Ukrainian.

The new site replaces an older WordPress website. That site no longer showed what the company does or how it works, and the team found it hard to maintain.

Flatstudio handled the concept, UX and UI design, copywriting, animation and development. The project took Bohdan Kononets and Roman Danyliuk three months.

The site stands on the identity Flatstudio created earlier, where a Ukrainian vyshyvanka flower sits on a Portuguese azulejo tile. That story is told in One Flower, Two Homelands: Tour Operator Branding for Insidertime. On the website, the same system gets more room and more detail.

What did the website have to show?

The main task was to show Portugal as it is, with its own charm and culture. On the site that means azulejo walls, a sunny sky, warmth, clean streets, good food and drinks, and olives on the table.

Almost any corner of a Portuguese city or landscape is already a picture for social media or a family photo book. The design leaves room for those pictures and keeps everything around them light.

The second task was language. The site runs in Ukrainian, English and Portuguese, with Ukrainian at the center. A traveler can arrive in a new country and get the whole service from people who share their language and background.

Insidertime founder Igor Kucheriavyi said the finished site delivers exactly that.

How does the homepage put a visitor in Portugal?

Clouds drift slowly across the header. The page is white and pale sky blue, with yellow kept for buttons. The whole screen reads as a clear day on the coast.

The first block is a slider. Its photos move from Lisbon to Porto, then to Coimbra and Sintra. A tour card sits in the center of the slider and changes with the photos.

The card answers the first questions a traveler has:

1. The tour name and a button that opens its page.
2. The price for the whole car, the whole van, or per person on walking tours.
3. The duration.
4. The rating and the number of reviews.

Further down, a counter shows how many hours Insidertime guides have spent with their guests, labeled as hours of great memories and surrounded by trip photos. One number does the work of a long "about us" paragraph.

How does the brand appear on the site?

Two shapes from the logo became photo frames. Pictures are cut into the rounded outline of an azulejo tile and into the sharp star of the vyshyvanka flower. Both frames repeat on every page.

A band of embroidered flowers runs under the photo strips, like the hem of a shirt. Pale azulejo panels of the kind found on facades in Lisbon and Porto fill the backgrounds behind cards and banners. The full identity, from logo construction to merchandise, is in the Insidertime branding case.

Icons from the brand set explain how a tour works: transport type, group size, duration. The logic behind pairing icons with a typeface is covered in Beyond the Pixel.

What does a tour page tell a traveler before booking?

Each tour page puts the deciding facts beside the booking button:

• Tour type, private or shared format, and duration.
• Price per car, per van, per tuk tuk or per person, with the number of people each option fits.
• Rating and review count.
• Languages the tour runs in.
• What the price includes and what it leaves out.
• Who the tour suits best, and who should pick another one.

The last point is rare on travel sites. Telling a visitor that a slow, detailed tour will disappoint someone who wants to see as much as possible in one day saves both sides a bad afternoon.

How are transfers and vehicles presented?

The transfers page lists four services: airport transfers, intercity transfers, a chauffeur by the hour, and group or corporate transport.

The fleet page then shows each vehicle before the traveler chooses one. A Tesla Model 3, a Mercedes E-Class, a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter and a tuk tuk each get photos, a short description, and the number of passengers and pieces of luggage they carry.

Why can visitors choose their own guide?

Insidertime guides do more than narrate. The team page lists what they take on: planning the route, coordinating logistics, adapting the day to the guests and solving problems along the way. A line of tags adds restaurants, bars, nightlife, shopping and history.

Every guide has a card with the languages they speak, and a personal page with a bio, interests and tour types. A traveler can meet the guide before ordering a tour.

Flatstudio also came up with the guide's bag, a block that lists what every guide carries: a power bank, a water bottle, a first aid kit, an umbrella or raincoat, sunscreen and an extra phone charger. These are the things a tourist tends to leave at the hotel.

What is the site built on, and what comes next?

Flatstudio built the Insidertime website in Framer. The studio wanted to test the platform on a real client project, and the client agreed. The site is responsive across desktop and mobile.

Today every tour on the site is run by Insidertime. The plan is to add tours from vetted partners: boat trips, electric bike rides and more walking routes.

Flatstudio is now adding the final touches before launch, and the Insidertime team is waiting to switch from the old site to the new one.

Planning a website for a travel or local business? Tell Flatstudio about your project.