Fixing a boutique hotel's website performance and booking experience for tourists.
The Challenge:
Hotel Campo Bello contacted me earlier this year because their outdated website was stopping them from reaching their goals. Although about 4,000 people visited the site each month, mostly from the United States, very few visits turned into bookings. The hotel team felt their website didn't reflect the warm, welcoming experience guests could expect.
Their main problem was not just the old design, but also technical issues that made it hard to achieve their vision for the hotel. The WordPress site had too many plugins and unoptimized content, which made it very slow and caused potential guests to leave before booking. Confusing navigation, blank pages, and missing content added to their frustration. It was clear they needed a solution that fit their real needs and goals.
Key pain points:
- Slow conversions: Found it slow and tedious to create projects and assign tasks, which hurt their productivity.
- Poor maintenance: Struggled to figure out which tasks to tackle first, leading to confusion and missed deadlines.
- Misaligned audience: The tool didn’t provide useful information about project profits or how each team member contributed.
The Solution:
To solve these problems, we first agreed on the project scope: fix the backend issues before working on the design.
I started by making a full backup. Before each big technical change, I talked through the options with the hotel team to make sure everyone was on board. For example, I explained the pros and cons of different themes and how each would affect the website’s speed and guest experience. After I cleaned up the WordPress setup and installed a new theme, the team chose an option that matched the client’s priorities and kept the site running smoothly. After that, I followed these steps:
- Established the primary audience and worked on content strategy with the marketing director.
- Defined new user journeys and a sitemap.
- Fixed navigation and pinpointed conversion paths.
- Agreed on creative direction with key stakeholders.
- Designed two key pages (homepage and rooms) for approval.
- Once the visual system was approved, I started building components, templates, and individual pages in WordPress.
- Tested and reviewed navigation, accessibility, performance, and responsiveness.
During the project, I worked closely with the hotel’s management and main stakeholders. We held regular check-ins to ensure their vision came to life. Once the marketing director approved the content, I set up the new pages and made sure everything worked properly.
The Impact:
With the new website, Hotel Campo Bello keeps its steady traffic and now offers a much better user experience. Since the redesign, average page load times dropped from over 3 minutes to under 5 seconds. Monthly bookings for the two most popular rooms went up by 28 percent compared to before. Now, a steady stream of people book these rooms.
Their busiest season is from August to October, so starting the project in March and finishing in mid-July worked out well. The redesign took about four months, which meant the new website launched just before their peak period.
The website is now live. To keep everything running smoothly and make it easy for the marketing director to update content, I provide ongoing maintenance. This includes regular plugin updates, security checks, fixing technical problems, and helping with content changes when needed. This keeps the website up to date and running smoothly long after launch.