A country pub situated in one of Test Valley's prettiest villages.

The Client

Kate & Mike are the Landlady and Landlord of the Royal Oak Goodworth Clatford. A country pub situated in one of Test Valley's prettiest villages. They have been running the pub for the last 21 years serving delicious food and drinks to their local community.

In 2020 covid decimated the hospitality industry, requiring shops and restaurants to close their doors to customers, during this time the Royal Oak pivoted to offering many of their most popular meals as takeaways.

The Brief

Redesign the existing website in a countryside theme to match the pub's aesthetic, enable easier updating of website content and menus, and showcase the new takeaway offerings available.

The process

We rebuilt the site on Squarespace and dressed it in a countryside theme that matches the pub itself: warm, unfussy and a long way from the templates most village pubs end up with.

The priority was handing control back to Kate and Mike. Menus, events and opening hours are all editable in place, so a change of special or a change of season goes live in minutes without a developer.

The new takeaway service needed a home of its own, so we gave it prominent billing across the site rather than burying it in a page of its own. The offering that kept the kitchen running through lockdown was the first thing visitors saw.

The result

The new website helped the Royal Oak to weather an extremely tough and uncertain time, managing to successfully help launch their takeaway service, which ultimately helped them to survive the pandemic.

Over the last year, there has been a 48% increase in website traffic and improved SEO rankings.