A Better Beach Vacation Home Rental Experience for PenFed Realty

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices PenFed Realty is dedicated to offering exceptional coastal vacation stays. They provide a diverse selection of beach properties, catering to families, couples, and solo travelers searching for the perfect ocean getaway. PenFed focuses on pairing guests with the beach experience that best suits their style. 

Nonetheless, PenFed's website wasn't meeting users' expectations—it was slow and somewhat challenging to use. That's why they teamed up with Inclind for a new-generation website. PenFed needed a refreshed site to improve usability and attract more visitors with engaging content. Inclind revamped its site, making it faster, more user-friendly, and a content-rich hub to drive up bookings and increase online reach.

PenFed Beach Rentals recognized their old website's limitations. It wasn't keeping pace with traveler’s expectations, especially those who wanted a quick, intuitive booking process. With increasing competition, PenFed identified several key challenges

1. Improving User-Friendliness: The booking journey was cumbersome and lengthy, often causing potential guests to abandon their reservations. The interface wasn't user-friendly, leading to visitor frustration and overwhelming the team with inquiries.
2. Enhancing SEO Content: PenFed needed its website to offer more than rental listings. The site needed to attract new visitors with engaging, SEO-friendly content. Their outdated format limited the site's reach.
3. Boosting Speed and Performance: The site's slow load times turned away potential guests, negatively affecting conversion rates and overall satisfaction.
4. Adding Innovative Features: To stay competitive and meet the needs of modern travelers, PenFed wanted to integrate features like rating systems and comprehensive property descriptions, which the previous platform couldn't support effectively. 

Inclind took a strategic approach to addressing PenFed's challenges, focusing on user experience and SEO improvement. We upgraded PenFed from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10 and created a headless frontend using NextJS.

1. Refreshing Design with User Focus: We redesigned PenFed's site, creating a modern, attractive interface that simplifies the vacation rental finding and booking process, guiding users from browsing to booking easily.
2. Expanding Digital Content: We broadened PenFed's digital footprint by introducing blog articles, destination guides, and community pages, boosting their SEO profile and engaging visitors.
3. Escapia Integration: Our team upgraded the integration with Escapia (vacation rental management system) to be more real-time to ensure accurate property information and empower PenFed to augment property attributes in more useful ways for visitors.
4. Implementing Advanced Search Options: Inclind designed a sophisticated search function with date filters and flexible travel options, allowing users to easily find their ideal rental.
   • Flexible date searching (weekly rentals, seasonal rentals)
   • Map based results
   • Custom sorting algorithms
5. Introducing Engaging Features: We added features like property ratings, enhanced photo galleries, and amenity highlights, providing guests with the necessary details to make informed choices.
   • Smart property lists
   • Ratings summaries
   • Mobile optimized reservations
6. Optimizing Site Speed and Performance: We used advanced techniques to significantly reduce load times, enhancing user experience and boosting SEO rankings.
   • CloudFlare Images integration
   • AI AI-assisted template optimization