Fixing a broken website and building something that actually works
Select Chalets are a chalet rental company based in Burgess Hill. They manage holiday chalets and needed a website that let customers browse availability and book directly — sounds simple enough, but their existing site was making that harder than it should be.
Martyn got in touch because the current WordPress site had become a liability. Outdated design, terrible navigation, and a growing list of broken URLs. For a rental business where the website is essentially your shopfront, that’s costing you bookings.
The brief
Beyond the obvious visual refresh, the main issue was functionality. The old site made it difficult for customers to find what they were looking for and even harder for staff to manage bookings on the backend. Martyn needed something that worked for both sides — a clean experience for visitors and a proper system for the team.
I met them at their office in Burgess Hill to talk through the pain points and understand exactly what wasn’t working. It became clear this wasn’t just a redesign job — it needed custom functionality built from scratch.
The build
Design
We worked through the design in Figma, going through revisions until Martyn and the team were happy. The focus was on making the booking journey as straightforward as possible — visitors should be able to find a chalet, check availability, and book without getting lost or frustrated.
Custom development
This is where the project got more technical. Off-the-shelf booking plugins don’t always fit how a business actually operates, so I built custom solutions:
Custom booking plugin — handles the chalet reservations and availability in a way that matches how Select Chalets actually manage their properties.
Floating booking forms — persistent booking interface so visitors can check dates and availability without losing their place on the site.
Backend CMS for staff — a proper management system so the team can handle bookings, update availability, and manage everything themselves without needing to call me for every change.
SEO
The broken URLs on the old site were hurting their search visibility. We cleaned all of that up, set up proper redirects, and built the new site with SEO in mind from the start — clean structure, sensible page hierarchy, fast loading.
The result
The team are really pleased with how it turned out, and more importantly, it’s performing well. The booking system works the way they need it to, customers can actually find what they’re looking for, and the staff have a backend they can manage themselves.
