Case Study: How bnb AMPLIFY Helped Jodie Stirling Rebrand Her Website

Case Study - Jodie Stirling

What Are Others Already Saying About Our 'Visual Brand Design & Performance?'

"I know I am in good hands here.

Thank you!" - Jodie Stirling

Jodie and Glenn of Tetbury Cotswolds Cottages and bnb AMPLIFY

Tetbury Cotswolds Cottages Case Study

How Tetbury Cotswolds Cottages used bnb SiteBuilder to Make Their Direct Booking Website Better and Faster!

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Overview

The notion that you must list your properties on the OTAs in order to see increased bookings in the vacation rental industry is a mere fallacy. This is a common misunderstanding as human beings have been providing hospitality accommodations since time immemorial. We simply know that you can have major success without complete dependency on the OTAs like Airbnb and Vrbo.

To achieve our goal of attracting the perfect guest as our target audience, we decided to combine Localized SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Google's Lighthouse Speed Technology with our own content marketing and brand strategy insights.

The approach helped us design a beautiful direct booking website that was mobile ready, has super fast loading speeds, and with the right Call-to-Actions for getting website visitors to book a stay.

What Was the Issue?
Jodie has been providing full-time accommodations to guests, who are travelling to the Tetbury Cotswolds area, for two years. Jodie and her husband, Glenn, have been on Airbnb and have had the pleasure to reach the Superhost status. They have worked hard and wanted to provide a more direct experience for their guests.

Jodie and Glenn decided to build a direct booking website and found a freelancer on Fiverr to complete the project work. They chose to work with a WordPress theme and decided upon Smoobu for their channel manager. Everything was going fine until the final project came up for review.

The Fiverr freelancer created the website, but it was poorly designed and lacked in performance, especially with the mobile and desktop page loading times. The site was an embarrassment and a waste of time and money. Jodie then looked for a better option.

The First Engagement

Jodie reached out to use during a promotion we were running on Facebook. I was first able to chat with her via FB messenger and she detailed her journey about finding a legit website designer who could deliver on their promise. She had already gone through two other freelancers who created poor website designs for her holiday rental business. Her journey ended with us!

I assured her that we would create a beautiful direct booking website for her vacation rentals and that we would deliver the results upfront without payment. Yes! We wanted to prove to Jodie that we could get the job done right, so we created a new site for her with no obligations to pay. The idea was that if Jodie truly like the website, then she would gladly invest in our design services and become a partner-client.

Yes... we are that confident and trusting of who we are willing to work with.

I was then able to have a phone conversation with Jodie and she explained everything that she felt I needed to know. She also asked tons of great questions about our service. After we were able to come to an understanding of her needs, Jodie was then invited to a private Communication Workflow where all the magic happened. We enjoyed our time together and I felt that the workflow brought us closer as a team.

What Did We Do?

As I stated earlier, we wanted to provide results upfront to prove ourselves to Jodie. We didn't want her to feel like she was getting into a situation where money would be lost. We had previously designed the site without her input and based the design solely on our own industry knowledge and design skills.

Jodie loved the site so much that there wasn't much for us to change. Through our Communication Workflow System, Jodie was able to share what she wanted to add and take away from the website. Our focus was to stay on schedule by reaching our milestones and accomplishing design goals. We did both!

We also discussed Jodie's guest personas, her local competition, and the keywords that would be used by potential guests who are travelling to the area. This gave us a better understanding of her target market and what to communicate to compel travelers to book via her direct booking website.

What Was the Impact?

We were able to give Jodie everything she needed she asked for in the creation of her direct booking website. She walks away feeling like her voice had been heard, her needs had being met, and new friends she had made. Jodie can now sleep well at night knowing that she has a team backing her every step of the way, and a beautiful high converting direct booking website that'll highlight her cottages.

In the creation of her new website, it was important that her site met all performance metrics by both Google standards and our own. The main focus was page loading speeds. This needed to be much better with her new site on both mobile and desktop versions.

Google did a study in 2017 which stated that pages that load between 1-5 seconds the probability of bounce increases 90%. This means that there is a 90% chance that potential guests are leaving your site within 1-5 seconds of page loading time. You can see why speed was of great importance for us!

Below you can view a screenshot of Jodie's old site and the PageSpeed score given by Google. The mobile version of Jodie's old site scored a 18 out of 100 for loading speed. It took 39 total seconds for the mobile version of her old site to fully load. How many potential guests do you think Jodie lost with a slow loading time of 39 total seconds?

Mobile Version; old website built on WordPress

vacation rental website builder for google pagespeed

Jodie's desktop version of her old site was no better. Google scored her desktop version a 33 out of 100 with the average fully loading speed time of 7.9 seconds. This was unacceptable for a desktop version of a direct booking website. We needed to change the outcome and we did!

Desktop Version; old website built on WordPress

A screenshot of a website with the number 33 on it.

We also wanted to check the page speed on other platforms as it relates to Jodie's old site and below is a screenshot taken from the SEO tool Uber Suggest to prove the lack of speed performance.

A screenshot of a website that shows the number of seconds

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Time was of the essence so we wanted to get started on Jodie's new direct booking website immediately. After we received all the information we were able to customize a design. The outcome for page speed performance was what we expected. Below you can view screenshots of the Google PageSpeed scores of her new direct booking website built on our platform.

Mobile Version; new website built on bnb SiteBuilder

The desktop version of Jodie's new website is loading as it should. We took care of the issue and wanted to live up to our promise. Below you can see the Google PageSpeed desktop score of 99 out of 100.

Desktop Version; new website built with bnb AMPLIFY's

vacation rental website software by bnb AMPLIFY

Below is a screen shot from the SEO tool Uber Suggest reporting on the new website's page speed.

keyword research for vacation rental website client at bnb AMPLIFY

What Were the Points of Learning Identified?

The vacation rental industry has taking a major hit since the emergence of COVID-19. It will be those who see the opportunity in all the chaos and seize the moment. More than ever, vacation rental hosts and professionals will need to start building their own direct booking website as the OTAs will continue to modify policies to adjust to the pandemic and economic recession.

Branding and digital marketing strategies will need to be a part of every vacation rental professionals learning experience. There is no other way around it. If vacation rental companies want to thrive in our current environment then they will need to build a brand that guest love.

Jodie is now able to build a successful brand around her business. She has the foundation laid out and a new team of brand and digital marketers in her corner. In the immediate future, Jodie will be offering Experiences on her website for her guests to enjoy. This will come with an upgrade to our eCommerce package and we will help Jodie reach her goals during the entire process.