Country estate
Craigengillan
One site for a 3,000-acre Scottish estate selling cottages, cabins, exclusive-use hire, weddings, corporate retreats, riding, and fishing.
- Client: Craigengillan Estate
- 2026
Craigengillan is a 3,000-acre estate in the Ayrshire hills with four centuries of recorded history, a designed landscape, and the UK's first Dark Sky Park on its doorstep. It also runs at least six distinct businesses, and they all needed to live on one website without drowning each other out.
The problem
The challenge
The estate sells self-catering cottages, timber cabins, exclusive use of Craigengillan House for large parties, weddings, corporate retreats, riding on private trails, and brown trout fishing on the river and loch. Those are not variations on a theme. A wedding planner, a family looking for a dog-friendly cottage, and a company booking an offsite are three different people with three different questions, and a single undifferentiated site fails all of them.
The second problem is that the estate's real assets are difficult to convey in a list. Ness Glen after rain, a moorland safari, and a Dark Sky Park are experiences, not amenities. Bullet points flatten them into the same register as the parking situation.
And it all had to convert. An estate site that is admired and never booked is an expensive brochure.
What we did
The approach
The decisions that shaped the build, and why each one was made.
Information architecture per revenue line
Accommodation, experiences, weddings and events, and exclusive hire each given a proper path through the site rather than competing for space on one page.
Accommodation pages that answer the real questions
Cottages for two to eight guests, cabins for two to four, and the House for large parties, each with capacity, character, and the dog-friendly answer visible without hunting.
Experiences written as experiences
Estate safaris, gorge walks, riding, and fishing given editorial space, because Ness Glen after rain sells the estate in a way a facilities list never will.
Weddings and corporate treated as separate journeys
Two audiences with different questions, timelines, and decision-makers, so neither is asked to read the other's page.
A journal for seasonal editorial and search
Travel notes on specific places and seasons: genuinely good reading for a prospective guest, and the part of the site that earns long-tail search traffic year after year.
Booking integrated, not bolted on
Lodgify wired into the accommodation journey so availability and reservation sit where the decision is made instead of behind a link to somewhere else.
The differentiators given prominence
The Dark Sky Park, four centuries of history, and 3,000 acres are the reasons to choose this estate over another. They are positioned as such rather than buried in an About page.
Practical content that reduces enquiries
FAQs, location and travel guidance, dining, wellness, and history, so the questions that would otherwise arrive by email are answered before they are asked.
What came out
The outcome
Craigengillan now has a single site carrying every part of the estate: accommodation with integrated Lodgify booking, experiences, weddings and corporate events, galleries, a journal, and the practical guidance layer around them.
The structural decision that mattered most was refusing to compress the estate into one story. A guest booking a cabin and a couple booking a wedding now travel different routes through the same site, and neither has to read the other's material to find what they came for.
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