Case study

Compass Cottage Worth Matravers

A website for Compass Cottage in Worth Matravers, a five-bedroom Purbeck stone holiday house on the Jurassic Coast, with photography of every room.

Services provided: Website design, Photography, CMS integration (Atlas CMS), UX/UI design
Sector: Accommodation
Built: 2011
Website: selfcateringworthmatravers.co.uk (opens in a new tab)

The Challenge

Compass Cottage is a five-bedroom, architect-designed Purbeck stone house at Worth Matravers in the Isle of Purbeck, overlooking a sweep of the World Heritage Jurassic Coast. It offers self-catering stays for families, friends and couples, and the views are a large part of the appeal.

In 2011 the owners wanted a new website to promote the house. A holiday let lives or dies on its pictures, so the project began with photography, and they also wanted to be able to update the site themselves instead of paying for each change.

Our Approach

We photographed the rooms and the surroundings, and built a new website on our Atlas Lite CMS around that photography. The site is organised around what a guest needs to decide:

Accommodation: photo galleries of each room and the views from the house
Bookings: the details a prospective guest needs in order to book a stay
Local area: information on Worth Matravers, Swanage and the nearby attractions, so guests can plan their stay
Guest comments from people who have stayed
A contact page

The Results

The website presents Compass Cottage as the holiday destination it is, using photography of the house and its setting to do the persuading. Guests can see the rooms, read what previous visitors thought and find out how to book, and the owners can change prices, information and photographs themselves.