Wow. Simply put, this has to be one of the best re-design / re-builds of a major brands website I’ve seen to date. The design/build was done by Rokkan, who just happen to look after the digital accounts of some of the best brands in the world.

The new design is very “Virgin” in the usual funky way they go about things. It’s also very usable, with mega drop-down menus so that you can access all sub nav content in an instant. You’ll notice that the entire site is pushing web 2.0 functionality with the ability for users to post comments, questions and profiles on almost all of the 200 odd new landing pages for their businesses across the world. Infact, you can sign-up for the new online community and open a world of new content and interactivity with the brands.

Yes, thats right, they’ve seamlessly integrated their global operations into a single community based portal, and it actually works… very, very well! Rokkan re-designed and integrated over 200 new home pages for the groups businesses while creating some of the best community based features I’ve seen outside of facebook/ning/myspace. They’ve also setup a twitter widget as the primary feature of the home page, hanging directly off the logo and feeding the latest tweets from the brands twitter accounts.

The website also pushed localised content, offers, comments, bookmarks and tweets among a multitude of other features directly into the interface as you browse through the website. In the travel section you can browse by city and get user generated comments for almost anything…

Best of all, Virgin staff are actually interacting with the entire community every day. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. So make sure you checkout the new website here.

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