Adelaide Hills Website Design Case Study:

Boylen specialises in website design that combines exceptional user experience with strong search engine optimisation performance.

The website design, development and SEO challenge for the Adelaide Hills Hotel Group (AHHG) was to develop a unified “digital umbrella” for the group’s overarching brand and job opportunities, while allowing each venue to retain its individual character.

AHHG operates a portfolio of landmark regional hospitality venues. It needed a multi-venue digital solution – but with human centred design.

Our user experience (UX) specialists developed a solution that allows people to easily discover individual pub menus, live music, tasting events and make reservations without fragmented system jumps.

Our team focused on conversion-driven user experience paths. That meant designing optimised booking pathways for casual dining through to ticketed events. And naturally it had to work beautifully across all device types. All of this – combined with a technically robust content management system – means that SEO is both in-built and able to be expanded on.

The result is that each location has kept its own identity and target-market focus. A localised events calendar has also been very successful. We engineered a seamless, framework designed to position AHHG’s diverse hospitality portfolio in a clean, sophisticated ecosystem.

Beyond the customer experience, the website has become an important business tool for the Adelaide Hills Hotel Group.

In a competitive employment market, a dedicated careers section promotes job opportunities across all venues.

The “corporate” website also provides a central destination for news, promotions, seasonal events and loyalty initiatives, directing visitors to the most relevant venue.

The scalable architecture ensures additional venues can be incorporated as the business grows. And that can be achieved without massive cost and without compromising usability or search performance. A great example of future proofing!

Working closely with the client’s marketing professionals, we’ve built a sophisticated digital ecosystem – but kept the user experience nice and simple.

Feedback is that it has achieved the aim of supporting people at every stage of their journey, from discovering the Adelaide Hills Hotel Group and exploring its venues, to making a booking or applying for a job.

Importantly, the individual hotel websites have been designed around what people actually want from a pub website.

Menus, opening hours, bookings, functions and what’s on need to be easy to find. But hospitality websites also need to sell the experience. People want to know what a venue feels like before deciding where to spend their time.

It’s the balance between “hearts and minds”. That balance between information and inspiration is something the world’s best hospitality websites do particularly well.

The Crafers Hotel, for example, is a very different proposition to the Stanley Bridge Tavern. One has boutique accommodation, French-inspired dining and an extraordinary wine offering. The other has the character of a classic Adelaide Hills pub, complete with fireplaces and a large beer garden. Fourth Hill Providore again appeals to a different customer and occasion.

The websites reflect those differences rather than forcing every venue into an identical template.

But behind the individual designs is a common digital strategy.

Search engine optimisation has been considered from the ground up. Individual venues have their own content, location signals, events, menus and experiences, creating opportunities to rank for the many different ways people search for hospitality in the Adelaide Hills.

One size does not fit all for pubs, hotels and restaurants. Nor are patrons/customers homogenous. The person seeking a function venue for a work event is very different to a couple looking for a gourmet weekend getaway.

Changing direction, we are increasingly designing and structuring websites for the next generation of search.

Google’s AI Overviews and platforms such as ChatGPT and Claude are changing how people discover businesses. This multi-site web solution has clear information about:

Locations

Services

Food

Accommodation

Functions

Events

This easy-to-find data helps search engines – and AI systems – understand exactly what each venue offers and when it should be recommended.

It’s Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO). Not a common expression when we delivered the solution but it is building into mainstream thinking with each passing day (meaning we have ‘forward positioned’ these sites to meet the needs of GEO).

And because each website is part of the broader AHHG digital ecosystem, authority can be built across the group rather than each venue operating as an isolated online presence.

This solution is good example of where smart website architecture, SEO, content and user experience all come together.

So both the strategy and the technology is sophisticated … but for the customer, it isn’t.

They simply find the right venue, see what’s on, decide they like it and book.