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Accelerating the transition to a cleaner future: digitally empowering a game-changing brand
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Helping an exclusive wedding, events and holiday destination communicate what really matters
From the initial brief to a creative overhaul
Pennsylvania Castle Estate is a unique destination situated above the cliffs of Portland Island, on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast. Originally built in the late 1700s for John Penn, Governor of Portland, the house has been written about by Thomas Hardy and served as the meeting place of Churchill, Eisenhower and de Gaulle during World War Two.
Since 2011 the “Penn” has been a unique destination for unforgettable experiences – a perfect venue for weddings, private and corporate events and personal retreats.
We first started working with the team on brand strategy, helping them to define their mission, their values and voice. Our initial workshop focussed on both their customers and the estate itself, as they were trying to make sense of what felt like a somewhat disconnected destination. Our main task was to help them bring together and present one glorious offer.
We’ve helped them to define and communicate their wedding offer, a combination of unique locations, luxurious backdrops and a team that provides a genuinely personalised service with unwavering attention to detail.
We’ve helped to communicate the flexibility of the estate through corporate retreats, personal celebrations and as a film location.
As a result of these distinct projects, we were able to create a more robust visual language that could be used across the brand.
An extensive planning phase
As with many of the sites we redesign, our initial focus was the existing website. We identified the issues that needed fixing to ensure a smooth transition to the new site. This gave us a firm foundation to work from and would help the site protect much of its existing equity.
We ran a workshop with the team to ensure we considered each audience’s needs and user journey. Armed with all that information, and a thorough review of analytics data we replanned the site’s structure and information architecture.
Wireframes for the entire site were created, managing the balance of content and usability, with specific attention paid to how we presented accommodation options and managed booking journeys for key areas on the estate.
New signposting to bring the offer together
To give users a better, more rounded first impression we spent time ensuring that the homepage and other main section pages are well signposted. Focussing on the “one estate” concept we’ve brought together all the accommodation options and focussed in on the wedding offers and the bespoke service the team provide to clients.
The rest of the site flows from this starting point covering, often in great detail, the levels of service that clients can expect from the team, and how the events can be facilitated in distinct areas, or across the entirety of the estate.
Modularity and partnership at the core
Whilst we had detailed every page's content within the planning phases of the website, we took a modular approach to the build.
We created over 80 individual modules, all able to work seamlessly with each other. Over the course of the project, this allowed the quick ideation of pages, dependent on content, and a myriad of different modules working harmoniously together.
The result is a flexible system, used from the homepage and throughout the site, which allows the team at Penn Estate to build out new landing pages and complete sections with the confidence that each element has been fully considered and presented beautifully.
Working with the existing developers challenged our process, as usually our design and digital team work seamlessly across all of our digital projects. We worked with Penn’s existing development team in true partnership, from handing over the initial wireframes, editing and inputting content, to finessing and finalising the design work.
From planning to creative delivery
The outcomes of the project are simple. An extremely comprehensive plan for the entire website, all the content written, and every module designed to work harmoniously and responsively together.
In other words, a website which mirrors the style and substance of one of Dorset's hidden gems.
“The first workshop we did with Salad was a real eye-opener and helped us understand the true value we deliver to all of our guests. It was one of the first times we’d actually got together as a team to consider the ethos of our business which was expertly facilitated by Salad. The benefits were felt right there in the room. Salad managed to capture exactly who we are, why it matters and have helped weave those threads through the offer.
Moving through the development of our wedding and events services and the redesign of the website, they’ve elevated our visual and verbal style beautifully. It all feels so much more equivalent to our offer, and has really started to bring the entirety of our offer up to the position where we can realise its real value to our guest.”
Chris Holleyoak
Managing Director
