The Yorkshire Unicorn

The Yorkshire Unicorn is opening a business in a competitive industry where you can’t rely on word of mouth or local reputation. The website has to be really polished, with solid UX and a really easy way to book rooms.

Clear Call to Actions were required, and within the design , the flexibility to grow the business, and to change direction too. I’m always flexibile with requirements. Things don’t stand still in businesses, and the final website needs to reflect that.

Challenges Identified:

• Competing with yourself on third party platforms with no prior content or reputation
• Brand new business opportunity so no prior authority
• No existing user base and changing business plans as the business develops through it’s infancy/setup process.

The brand colours were really strong, with dark greens and gold, and a bold font. This worked well with large headings particularly on larger screens. The responsive nature of the design worked well, and a carousel to show off each individual room added a little visual appeal.

Finally, adding a symbol site wide to show whether certain rooms or attractions were dog friendly was a nice touch.

As always, imagery is key to websites that need to make a first impression count. Images of the brand new bedrooms by a super local photographer makes the pages pop and strengthens the brand.

Challenge & Solution

Using a combination of WordPress and Advanced Custom Fields to manipulate the WordPress editor, the content managers at The Yorkshire Unicorn can add new rooms as and when they become available, and add new businesses in Skipton that they wish to advertise, again, as and when that changes.

Finally, a widget has been added to pull reviews from TripAdvisor and display them directly on the website. This will prove really useful as the business grows, providing social proof to their existing customers.

Features:

• Call to action buttons to book direct with the hotel, increasing profitability per room
• Easy to navigate menu
• Easy to update CMS to add places to explore, new rooms as they become available and update amenities as required

Final Result

It will be a challenge to get more bookings through the website than through third party platforms. But as we move forward and provide more content, we will look at how to rank the website, especially in local search.

As it is, the feedback from Rebecca, the owner, was glowing - I hope as the feedback comes in from customers, I can start sharing that here too!