Mount Congreve
“Nothing ever seems to be a problem, the entire team are always helpful and available, very professional, and always give great advice. They provided training that was clear and concise which made everything easy to follow. I would recommend Márla Communications to anyone that needs help with any website needs”.
– Ray Sinnott, Manager, Mount Congreve House and Gardens
Opportunity / Challenge
Mount Congreve House and Gardens situated in Kilmeaden, Co. Waterford, in Ireland’s Ancient East is home to one of “the great gardens of the World”. When we met with Ray and his team, he shared the history of the gardens and house with us and explained that his goal for the coming year was to position Mount Congreve House and Gardens a destination of choice for both Tourists and the domestic market. He explained that their existing website was dated, was not mobile responsive and focused too much on plants, it did not showcase all that Mount Congreve has to offer e.g. coffee shop, retail shop, guided tours, gardens & seasonal events.
The booking system on the old website was cumbersome which often resulted in interested parties having to phone the office to book tickets which was not ideal. Ray advised that the new ecommerce site should be user friendly with ease of access, have clear call to action buttons to increase sales, it should have different storyboards for particular interest groups. The backend must be user friendly so that staff can easily update content and add new blogs.
Our task was to create an beautifully designed impactful ecommerce website which would immediately generate interest and entice visitors to peruse the website and book their visit. The new site needed to be accessible, easy to navigate and mobile-friendly and offer a seamless user journey through the site, we needed to achieve a balance between great design and optimised conversion. Our end goal was to generate more bookings.
The Solution
Throughout the process, we worked closely with Ray to deliver on the agreed objectives. As there are various levels to the service offerings at Mount Congreve, it was agreed that the home page of the website should act like a landing page, with each aspect of Mount Congreve presented in a beautifully designed tile. This would allow for cross promotion, when someone lands on the site they can easily find what they are looking for but are also presented with the full-service offering – some of which they may not have been aware of. We developed a user-friendly booking and payment system, Ray has advised that better conversion rates have been achieved since the launch of the new site- our tickets sales (helped in no small part by covid restrictions of course) have increased from around 10% online to over 80% online our ticket sales.
When the site was near completion, we set about implementing an SEO strategy, working on both on-page and off-page SEO. Training was provided to Ray and his team on how to update the site. At a later date, we also provided training on SEO and social media.
Ray was delighted with the result; he feels the website successful positions Mount Congreve House and Gardens as a must-see destination. For visitors, the new website design encourages them to visit the gardens for themselves, for staff the new website can be easily updated, and ticket sales can be managed effortlessly.
“I am not necessarily a tech guy but the guys in Márla helped me understand the workings of our website (outside of the obvious) in a way I really hadn’t appreciated before, if they can do that, they can do anything!”
– Ray Sinnott, Manager,
Mount Congreve House and Gardens
Expertise Applied
See our work mountcongreve.com
You might also like …
