The Wychwood Inn's Digital Refurbishment
A website as atmospheric as a real-life visit, backed by intelligent systems that give the team total content freedom.
Client
The Wychwood Inn
Sector
Hospitality & Leisure
Our Role
Web Design & Optimisation
Technology
Elementor, JetEngine
Project Overview
The Wychwood Inn is a traditional yet premium hotel, restaurant, and pub nestled in the picturesque Cotswolds village of Shipton-under-Wychwood.
Catering to locals, weekenders, and international tourists, the inn offers boutique accommodation, award-winning dining, and serves as a bustling community hub. Built on the values of great British hospitality, exceptional local sourcing, and premium comfort, their online presence needed to mirror their real-world guest experience: warm, inviting, refined, and frictionless.
Kaydee Web was instructed to completely redesign and optimise their website. Our approach was dual-focused: creating an aesthetic, atmospheric frontend experience to help the client get found, and building an intelligent, sturdy backend that gives them total content autonomy.
Main Objectives
The objective of the project was to create a visually appealing, high-converting digital gateway that solved the client’s digital marketing and website maintenance pain points, which were:
Admin Delays
Editing the original HTML website required waiting for external help, delaying simple hours and menu updates.
Scattered Events and Bookings
Live music, pub gatherings, and seasonal village events were difficult to add and keep aesthetically aligned.
Kaydee Web's Solution
We didn’t want to just give The Wychwood Inn a coat of digital paint; we wanted to build them a sustainable, long-term foundation for success. Using a robust WordPress stack (Elementor, JetEngine, and custom PHP), we bridged the gap between high-end aesthetics and daily usability. The result is a visually stunning, responsive, and highly secure digital experience.
Bespoke Backend Engineering
To eliminate the risk of accidental design breaks when making updates, we engineered a custom-built helper plugin. Instead of editing complicated design grids, the staff uses a simplified, isolated dashboard with dedicated hubs:
Opening Times Hub
Updating bar or kitchen hours in this dashboard instantly pushes the change site-wide.
Seasonal Menus Hub
Uploading a new food PDF automatically formats a beautifully styled dining menu card.
Press Mentions Hub
Pasting a media article's link automatically pulls the headline and logo into a citation card.
Job Vacancies Hub
Posting new positions adds the details to a neat careers board on the careers page.
Streamlining Events on the Website
Using JetEngine, we structured upcoming events into two distinct, aesthetically aligned views: an interactive calendar and a chronological list.
By synchronising the underlying design systems of both views, the client can add events without worrying about layouts drifting apart or looking messy on mobiles.
Safeguarding the Design
To ensure the site stays as pristine as the day it launched, we set up strict user roles. The Wychwood team is assigned a custom “Content Only” editor role, which gives them total freedom to change text, menus, and images, but blocks access to the structural grids and typography settings, so there is no risk of accidental breaks.
Design Polish and Visual Integrity
Websites are digital experiences, and details matter. To bring that premium Cotswolds feeling to the website, we layered in several thoughtful UX enhancements.
The Seamless Header
A smooth, translucent navigation bar that shrinks as you scroll, staying out of the way of the gorgeous imagery while keeping the "Book Now" option easily accessible.
Adaptive Visual Storytelling
Smart image scaling so that photographer Paul Martin's stunning, atmospheric photography of the inn and surrounding countryside automatically adapts to smartphones, tablets, and desktops without awkward cropping.
Flawless Mobile Navigation
We refined the slide-out mobile menu so it glides effortlessly over page content, making booking on the go a breeze.
Challenges in the Web Design Project
Every design project has challenges. We bypassed rigid third-party software constraints to maintain speed, security, and aesthetics.
The Third-Party Booking Bottleneck
Both the accommodation software (Q-Book) and the restaurant table reservation platform had highly limited styling parameters and looked extremely unappealing inside standard embedded iframe windows.
How Kaydee Web Engineered a Solution
Instead of forcing a visually unappealing, unresponsive experience onto users, we designed high-impact, custom call-to-action paths, integrated secure HTML code snippets on key landing pages and directed guests to clean, dedicated external booking environments built for conversion.
Challenge 2
Advanced Marketing Segment Automation
The inn needed their newsletter signup to work harder: capturing customer origins for relevant, targeted campaigns without overwhelming users with lengthy forms.
How Kaydee Web Engineered a Solution
We engineered a bespoke signup gateway hooked directly to Mailchimp’s API. When users subscribe, the backend automatically tags them as “Local” or “National”, letting the marketing team distribute tailored event promotions vs seasonal deals instantly.
Website Project Results
Ultimately, we helped The Wychwood Inn create a website that is as welcoming, reliable, and premium as the experience of physically walking through their doors.
It was a joy to work with a team that is so passionate about what they do, their local area, and who were highly responsive throughout, just like their new website.
100% Client Autonomy
The client can now independently update seasonal menus and change their hours instantly.
Reduced Broken Layout Risk
Because the design infrastructure is locked away from the content entry forms, the site remains visually flawless.
Effortless, Accessible Booking
Banners scale perfectly, text is highly legible, and call to actions are optimised.
Hardened Security & Speed
Managed backups, a hidden login gateway (WPS Hide Login), and automated firewalls keep the site fast, secure, and ready to handle high-traffic booking seasons.
100% Client Autonomy
The client can now independently update seasonal menus and change their hours instantly.
90+
Lighthouse score
100%
Mobile Optimised
Fast
Siteground Cached
Safe
Firewall Protected
“Kelly and her team have been fantastic from start to finish in redesigning our website. Kelly took the time to understand the look and feel we were aiming for and was there every step of the way, offering guidance on colours, images, language, functionality and SEO. Every member of the team was responsive, patient, helpful and knowledgeable throughout the process. We absolutely love the final result and would not hesitate to work with Kaydee Web again on future projects or recommend their services to others.”
Katharine Orszulik
The Wychwood Inn