Revisiting a Website After the First Year in Business

Long Lake Memories has officially been in business for a little over a year, which made this a good time to go back through their website and see what needed to change.

I originally worked with Long Lake Memories on their website when they were getting ready to open. At that point, the property was brand new to guests and the website was built around how they expected the business to operate. They planned to host large vacation stays along with weddings and private events, so the site needed to introduce the property and give each side of the business room to grow.

After a year of bookings, inquiries and conversations with guests, they had a much clearer picture of how people were actually using the property. They had also made updates to the house, added new amenities and built up a much larger library of photography and local content.

The website was still doing its job, so there was no reason to redesign it from scratch. Instead, I went through the existing site and focused on updating it around what Long Lake Memories had learned during their first year in business.

Shifting the focus toward vacation stays

One of the biggest things that first year revealed was that guests were overwhelmingly booking Long Lake Memories for vacation stays.

The original website gave quite a bit of space to weddings and private events because those were expected to be a larger part of the business. Once they had a year of actual bookings to look at, it made sense to give more of the website to the type of stay people were choosing most often.

I reworked the messaging throughout the site to focus more on family gatherings, long weekends and bringing a large group together at the lake. Capacity, sleeping accommodations and amenities became much easier to find, especially since those details matter when someone is trying to figure out whether a property will work for a group of 20 or 30 people.

Private events still have a place on the website, but the overall experience is now much more closely aligned with the way people are actually booking the property.

Showing what a stay at Long Lake Memories actually looks like

When the original website launched, there were plenty of beautiful photos of the house and property. Over the following year, Long Lake Memories also built up a library of lifestyle photography showing people spending time there.

I wanted those photos to have a much bigger presence on the updated site because they tell a different part of the story.

Future guests can now see people gathering in the house, eating together, kayaking, spending time on the boat and enjoying the lake. There are still plenty of property photos for someone who wants to see the bedrooms or understand the layout, but the lifestyle photography makes it much easier to picture what a weekend there could actually look like.

That shift also helped the website feel more connected to the experience Long Lake Memories offers instead of relying so heavily on photos of empty rooms.

Building FAQs from real guest questions

The new FAQ section is one of those things that became much easier to create after the business had been open for a year.

By that point, Long Lake Memories had a full year of inquiries, emails and guest conversations to pull from. They knew which questions came up regularly and where people needed more information before they felt comfortable booking.

I used those real questions to build the FAQ section instead of trying to guess what someone might want to know. It covers practical information about the property, overnight stays and private events, with answers based on the conversations they were already having with potential guests.

It also gives them a section that can continue to grow as new questions come up.

Reorganizing a growing library of local recommendations

The regional content had grown quite a bit during Long Lake Memories’ first year. They had recommendations for restaurants, nearby towns, beaches, wineries and other things to do throughout Northwest Indiana and Southwest Michigan.

There was a lot of useful information, but as more was added, some of the content started to overlap and the section became harder to browse.

I reorganized everything into a simpler Explore the Region section, with guides for the Indiana Dunes and Lake Michigan, Downtown Valparaiso and Southwest Michigan. Guests can now choose the area they’re interested in and find recommendations from there instead of sorting through one large collection of information.

I also started adding blog posts around the types of things people are searching for when planning a trip to the area. The goal is to give guests useful resources before and during their stay while also creating more opportunities for Long Lake Memories to show up in local search.

Simplifying the website as we added more information

There was quite a bit of new information to work into the website, but I didn’t want that to make the site feel bigger or harder to navigate.

As I went through each page, I looked for content that was repeated, sections that could be combined and pages that no longer needed to exist on their own. I simplified the navigation and reorganized content so there was a clearer path from learning about the property to exploring the accommodations and eventually checking availability.

The updated website actually contains more useful information than the original, but it’s organized in a way that makes it easier to find.

A website can change without starting over

Coming back to the Long Lake Memories website after a year was very different from working on it before they opened. This time, there was a year of real information to pull from, including bookings, guest questions, new photography and changes to the property itself.

That gave me a much better foundation for deciding what deserved more attention on the website and what could be simplified.

The original site was still working well, so I kept the parts that made sense and focused on updating the messaging, imagery, organization and content around the business Long Lake Memories had become during that first year.

This project is also a good example of why I added Strategic Website Review & Implementation to my Avenue Bee services. Sometimes a website is still a good fit for the business overall, but enough has changed that the content and structure could use another look.

If your website doesn’t need a full redesign but no longer feels completely caught up with your business, Strategic Website Review + Implementation is designed for exactly that.