Bielefeld Gutschein

A city voucher combines two jobs in one site. On one side there is the purchase, usually as a gift and often under time pressure. On the other side there is the holder of a card who only wants to know how much credit is left on it. Both groups arrive with a clear intention, but with opposite expectations of the site.

A third layer comes with the partner companies where the voucher can be redeemed. That list changes continuously, and for people considering a purchase it is the actual argument. A voucher is worth as much as the choice of places that accept it.

A relaunch in this situation does not start on empty ground either. The voucher cards exist physically, they are in circulation and they bring a design of their own. The website has to connect to that so card and platform stay recognisable as the same thing.

Following the design of the voucher cards and the previous site, a friendly and functional redesign was developed. The two main paths, checking the balance and buying the voucher as a gift, sit next to each other instead of one behind the other. In the mobile view in particular, care was taken to keep both entry points easy to reach.

That is a deliberate departure from the usual sales logic in which everything funnels towards the purchase. For a city voucher, the balance check is not a side path but a frequent reason to come to the site at all. Hiding it creates searching for exactly the people who already hold the voucher in their hands.

The partner companies are integrated through a direct connection to the management system of Bielefeld. A connection like this takes the maintenance out of the website: the state of the acceptance points is kept where it is administered anyway, and the site displays it.

An early question is where the leading data sits. As soon as acceptance points, balances and sales are maintained in several places, discrepancies appear, and with a means of payment discrepancies are noticed immediately. A clear assignment of which side owns which information is therefore not a technical side issue but the basis for trust in the platform.

The second decision concerns the paths themselves. Buying as a gift has other requirements than buying for oneself, and a balance check should work without an account and without detours. Every additional intermediate page costs more on a mobile device than at a desk.

After launch, ease of maintenance carries the site. A city voucher lives seasonally, with promotions and changing partners. A platform that can be updated without design work stays usable for years. One that requires manual intervention for every change ages quickly.