Discover how Restaurants Brighton increased crucial holiday visits by 125% and user engagement by 68% with a web support and maintenance retainer from Greyhound Studio.

The problem

Despite a good reputation for providing high-quality reviews, guides, and recommendations, Restaurants Brighton was facing increasing difficulties with its events functionality. While it had performed as expected when built, user expectations and website best practices change over time, and their system was struggling to keep up. Their main issues included:

• High drop-off rate on events pages: Poor navigation and visual appeal led to a high percentage of drop-offs on the events page, harming Restaurants Brighton’s reputation and SERP rankings. 
• Difficulty inputting and updating events: The existing system had limited functionality and was poorly optimised to support recurring events, making workflow both cumbersome and frustrating.
• Poor user experience: The events page displayed a long, unfiltered list of events sorted only by date, without highlighting recurring events. This made it difficult to find relevant events and led to duplicates. 

The solution

When dealing with outdated functionality, web developers essentially have two options: patch and update the tool, or replace or rebuild it from scratch. While updates work great for minor fixes, in this case, we decided that a rebuild was the better option. We wanted to introduce several new features and quality-of-life improvements, ensuring that their events page matched the rest of the site in terms of user experience and satisfaction. 

To achieve these goals, we went for a solution that combines off-the-shelf plugins and custom development. Well-developed and supported WordPress plugins provide reliable and affordable core functionality, while custom-coded front-end solutions for very specific problems result in truly unique and memorable sites. 

• New backend system: We implemented the Event Organiser plugin, providing built-in support for recurring events, flexible scheduling, and easier data entry for Restaurants Brighton employees. Off-the-shelf plugins like these receive regular updates and patches, ensuring longevity and reducing long-term maintenance costs while minimising upfront costs.
• Custom front-end Elementor widget: Using the Vue framework, we built a custom Elementor front-end widget for intuitive and seamless events page navigation. Our key improvements included:
  • Clicking on events opens an information panel on the same page, replacing the previous clunky pop-up.
  • Events are now visible across multiple areas of the site, including the homepage and event pages, maintaining a cohesive look and feel.
  • Users can filter events by category and date without needing to refresh the page, ensuring a smooth and responsive browsing experience.
  • Key event information is immediately visible, allowing users to quickly assess relevance.
  • Additional small but impactful features specific to how Restaurants Brighton present events, such as displaying images differently depending on whether they are photos or posters.
  • Fully responsive and accessible design, ensuring usability across all devices and for all users.

The results

Making significant UX changes can immediately and dramatically affect how users experience and interact with your site. In Restaurants Brighton’s case, we saw:

• An immediate 68% increase in visitor engagement on the events page, raising the average session duration to over 5 minutes.
• A 125% increase in organic traffic to the events page during the critical Christmas period. 

With the visitors’ experiences now much more in line with their expectations, site users spent more time on the events page, leading to increased visibility for local businesses and helping Restaurants Brighton achieve their business goals more effectively. Additionally, the added time spent on the events page signals to Google that it offers high-quality and relevant results for specific keywords, resulting in a slight SEO boost. 

As a Greyhound Studio client since 2016, Restaurants Brighton has benefited from many site enhancements, with this project being just one example. With continued support and maintenance from Greyhound Studio, they’re well-positioned to keep growing their online presence as we consistently work to provide website, user experience, and SEO-friendly updates.