Website Redesign for LokalBond

Overview LokalBond is a community of home-hosted experiences across Türkiye. My friend Baver started it with his mom’s cooking class, and it has grown to dozens of experiences with local hosts, cooking, art, music, martial arts and tea, and [3,500+] guests welcomed so far. In Türkiye a guest is never a stranger, so every guest gets a nazar boncuğu. I’m one of three co-founders, and I redid the website.

The problem The old site didn’t look or work like the experience. “Redo the LokalBond website” had been my top to-do for months. A guest needed to find an experience, see who’s already booked, and reserve a spot in a few clicks. The team needed new host and creative ambassador applications to arrive in one place, and every approved experience had to reach the dashboard so future guests could book it.

My role and tools Design, product and build, as a solo job. Mockups in Figma, the key illustration drawn by hand in Procreate, everything built in Base44 through one long chat: I describe in Discuss mode, approve the plan, and Base44 builds it.

The table: the landing page is a hand-drawn table. Each object on it is a category (cook & dine, art, music, martial arts, breakfast) and links to its experiences.

Polaroid cards: each experience is a pinned polaroid with real photos from real hosts.

Calendar: it shows already booked sessions per day, so a guest can join a table with others from different cultures.

Nazar boncuğu: the evil eye drawn by hand appears across the site, because it’s the core of the brand.

Mobile: every page works on mobile.

When a guest reserves a spot, the host gets an email.

When the host approves, the guest gets a confirmation with the ticket.

New host and creative ambassador applications notify the team.

Approved experiences go into the dashboard and become available to future guests.

What I learned The booking flow was the easiest part to design in Base44. The harder part was making it feel handmade, so I drew the key pieces myself and gave Base44 direct links to my Figma references.

What’s next I’m convincing my friend to publish it as the main LokalBond website. I built it for the Base44 Challenge, but I’m not done working on it.

See my post if you want to leave a 🧿: