Iken Barns is a business which provides self-catering holiday cottages on the Suffolk Coast. They came to me because the majority of their bookings were coming from Suffolk Secrets and they wanted to take bookings through their own website, which was out of date and difficult to maintain as it had been built in 2015!

The WordPress website had an out of date blog, properties listed for hire and pages all under a single post type. The site looked out of date through the style, brand elements and the user experience.

The business didn't have a brand nor a logo (but they didn't feel they needed one at this stage) so the first thing we did was put in place the elements we would need to craft a website that looked great as well as being functional. We created a new brand direction that included a web-safe font, accessible colour palette and text hierarchy - all of which were designed to match the photography that already existed.

We then simplified the website and made it much more user friendly (for potential guests and Iken Barns) by:

• simplifying the site architecture - we got rid of lots of pages and instead used the main navigation to list the cottages
• using imagery to make the site more engaging -
• splitting the content into multiple types in the WordPress dashboard - we created custom post types to make it simple to maintain the content
• creating custom fields to make it easy to update the site content - custom fields
• creating custom page templates - the listings could have a consistent and engaging look and feel that were inspired by best in breed designs and layouts (such as AirBnB)
• SEO - created a custom SEO strategy to gain more traffic from search engines
• optimising Super Control - previously the booking system had a single booking form for all of the cottages which was convoluted and complicated. We created a calendar and booking system for each cottage, so that each listing could have an engaging and simple process to book

The business could see the benefits immediately, telling me that everyone found the new site to be MUCH simpler and easier to use. I loved working for this client!

Client Feedback

Iken Barns were thrilled and left me the following 5 star review on Trustpilot:

"J4G Design/Christopher has redesigned the web site for the 5 holiday lets at Iken Barns. From the initial contact with Christopher it was very clear that he would be a great person to work with. The work that he carried out was done in a short time frame and the switch to the new website perfect. He was always only an email or message away for any changes or queries.

We are really pleased with the new website and the subsequent SEO work that has been done. Christopher also offers additional support packages that we will continue to use. I cannot speak highly enough of Christopher and have no hesitation in recommending him."