How a stunning website redesign helped Green End Farm Cottages stay competitive in a crowded market
Green End Farm approached us to refresh their website and improve online bookings while preserving their strong SEO presence.
Through a highly visual, user-friendly redesign, we helped them stand out in a competitive market.
The new site reflects the calm, natural surroundings of their cottages, includes online booking functionality, and maintains their SEO rankings.
Now, with 50% of their business coming through the website, they’re in great shape to attract even more customers.
The Goal: To craft a stratgey to compete in a crowded market
Based in a very competitive region for a very competitive industry, the new Green End Farm website had to really stand out from the crowd, grabbing attention the moment a potential visitor landed on the site.
It was paramount to put the accommodation’s USPs front and centre.
The owners (Fran & Andy) wanted to highlight their food kitchen as point of distinction.
Challenges: Preserving SEO and migrating key data
The site had strong SEO and good Domain Authority, so we had to ensure the redesign preserved those results while aligning with the latest industry standards
Even more challenging was the transfer of past and existing bookings, which all needed to be moved from the old site to the new one.
We had to ensure every historic, current and future booking was transferred safely and securely without losing or corrupting any vital data.
Our solution: A visual, SEO-friendly design with seamless booking
- Built the new website on a staging site to avoid disrupting current operations.
- Created a highly visual design with curated imagery to highlight the cottages’ location and quality.
- Optimised images and video content to maintain site speed despite large media files.
- Added an availability calendar and online booking form to make booking easier for guests.
We kicked off with a Discovery Session to understand Fran & Andy’s vision, their ideal customer, and the unique qualities of their holiday let business.
The new website was first built on a staging site, meaning that the existing site could continue running as normal while we fine-tuned and finalised the new design. This allowed Green End Farm to continue providing information for guests and to continue collecting bookings while our work was ongoing.
UX and UI: The design and colour palette
We took some time to consider the colour scheme to make sure that it represented the tranquillity of the location and the preferences of the client. A relaxed palette of greens and whites reflects the natural surroundings and provides a sense of calm.
The design was created to be very visual, using lots of imagery to show off the location and the quality of the holiday cottages. Imagery was chosen by the client, with guidance from us, to provide the biggest and most immediate impact to website visitors when they landed on the site.
Development
With so much imagery and video content on the site – which is vital to show off the features of the holiday accommodation – it was important to ensure site speed wasn’t compromised. When hosting many large images, sites can become slow and clunky, so we ensured all images were compressed and properly optimised so that they were as light as possible, while still providing quality visuals.
Many independent holiday cottage websites require users to call or email to confirm availability and make a booking. However, as we know that most people nowadays like to book online, we wanted to make sure that this option was available. As much information as possible was provided for each cottage, anticipating and answering any questions guests might have before booking.
An availability calendar was added, as well as an online booking form.
Going live
Once the design was agreed and fully tested, we moved pages over to the current site, replacing old designs and content with new.
We also kept the same URLs in order to reduce the risk of 404 ‘page not found’ errors.
This resulted in minimum disruption and downtime so that Green End Farm didn’t risk losing any business or traffic.
Results: A 56% increase in bookings
Since launching the redesigned website, Green End Farm has seen incredible results.
Food orders have increased by 56%, while bookings through the website have also grown by 56%, showing just how effective the design has been.
Website traffic has risen by 20%, thanks to the optimised design and preserved SEO strategy, and average user engagement has significantly improved.
The refreshed website isn’t just visually appealing—it’s a powerful tool that’s helping Green End Farm thrive in a highly competitive market.
“I found working with Angela great. She is patient, professional, easy to communicate with and clear in her ideas. I trusted her to help me make the right decisions and valued her input into the site. Angela had great knowledge about my type of business and I know at times she was really putting a customer head on to help us land on the right language / layout. I would happily work with Angela and the team again.”
