Framework for Scalable Brand Integration
Since branding directly influences perception and loyalty, visual identity has become a crucial requirement for hotels when upgrading their digital presence. Selfbook offered complete customization as a key feature of the Express payment product, making it an ideal choice for brand-conscious hotels.
The time & effort spent onboarding clients soon became a critical concern — how do we balance speed and personalization? I partnered closely with cross-functional teams to create a brand integration framework to scale client rollouts, reduce time to launch, and decouple team dependencies.
the context
The hospitality industry is plagued by legacy systems that have failed to innovate over time, resulting in technological constraints, significant revenue loss, and fragmented user experiences. The complex web of multi-layered antiquated systems runs so deeply that real innovation ultimately requires unrealistic costs. Most hotels still struggle to offer modern payment methods, streamlined booking flows, or optimized mobile experiences.
Selfbook disrupts the industry with a suite of hospitality products that modernize the booking journey. Selfbook Express is a payment platform that enables hotels to leverage digital features expected by today’s tech-savvy consumers. Its key differentiator is its modular, plug-and-play format that allows hotels to offer digital wallets and Buy Now Pay Later. Express can be configured to meet the unique needs of each client, making it an ideal choice for brand-conscious hotels.
the vision
Guests expect a cohesive brand experience at every touchpoint.
It has such a direct influence on guest perception and loyalty that visual identity has become a crucial requirement for hotels when upgrading their digital presence.
Initially, our design and development team spent significant effort onboarding our first clients, customizing and even redesigning features to win high-value clients. However, as our Express client base grew, the challenge became clear:
How do we balance speed and personalization? How can we offer brand flexibility without compromising our product vision and UX?
The vision was to create a methodology that would empower developers to deploy and customize the product independently without being bottlenecked by design, while preserving core functionality and UX integrity.
the process
Leadership tapped me to establish a set of rules clarifying brand integrations.
I conducted extensive research into the branding guidelines of a sample of clients, analyzing for high-impact visual elements. I partnered with our hospitality experts to identify what data was most important for hotels and at which stage of the user journey it needed to be captured.
Informed by this research, I mapped out which Express components could be customizable—typography, colors, fields, buttons—while ensuring other components, critical to functionality and usability—remained standardized. I collaborated closely with developers to establish clear specifications to ensure consistent implementation across various clients.
User experience was at the core of this approach: we aimed to create a product that felt personal and on-brand for each hotel, while championing more intuitive design & enhanced usability for guests.
the outcome
The process led us to produce:
- Redlined Figma mockups that provided developers with detailed specifications on the base, “Selfbook-branded” product across devices
- Clear guidelines to extract client brand elements and how to integrate them into specific components, supported by multiple mockups for various clients
- Standardized copy and UX writing to be implemented across all client rollouts
- Layouts that outlined all possible fields and inputs in anticipation of potential client requests; suggested Express placement on the checkout page in relation to variable page content.
The system reduced time-to-launch per client & increased client rollouts.
It also improved cross-team productivity by decoupling dependencies between design and development, empowering both teams to operate more autonomously.
