Case study · Guided tour operator, Dunedin
A dated tour site, rebuilt to load fast and take bookings.
Back to Nature Tours has run guided trips around the Otago Peninsula since 1997. Its website had fallen behind, so I rebuilt it from the ground up into a fast site the owner runs himself, with online booking built in and its Google rankings kept intact.
Where it started
Back to Nature Tours had been showing people the wildlife and landscapes of the Otago Peninsula since 1997, but the website hadn't kept pace. It was a dated mix of WordPress and Wix: slow to load, and small updates were enough of a wrestle that the site mostly went untouched. A slow site quietly costs a tour operator bookings before a visitor has even seen a tour.
What I built
Rather than swap one template for another, I redesigned the site from the ground up — a full custom design, rebuilt on a platform the owner edits himself.
- A full custom redesign, not a template swap, built to load quickly on the phones most visitors are using.
- A client-editable CMS, where Tours and Testimonials are their own collections, so the owner adds and updates content himself without touching the layout.
- FareHarbor booking integrated into the site, so visitors book a tour without being bounced off to somewhere else.
- A full SEO migration: existing URLs preserved, 301 redirects in place, and structured data (LocalBusiness, Product, FAQ) added, so years of Google ranking carried across instead of resetting. I've written up how that kind of move protects rankings if you're weighing up a rebuild of your own.
Custom design · Client-editable CMS · FareHarbor · SEO migration · Structured data
The result
The site now loads fast and the owner updates it himself, with bookings running straight through it. Because the migration preserved the URLs and redirects, the rankings the business had built up over the years came across intact rather than starting from zero. It is live now at backtonaturetours.co.nz.
What the client said
“Daniel did an outstanding job migrating our tourism website from FareHarbor WordPress to Webflow. Throughout the project he was professional, proactive, and an excellent communicator, providing regular updates and quickly resolving any challenges that arose. The finished website exceeded my expectations, with a seamless booking integration, great attention to detail, and a polished, professional result. I would have no hesitation in recommending Daniel to anyone looking for a skilled and reliable web developer, and I look forward to working with him again in the future.”
Chris Roberts · Back to Nature Tours · Verified Google review ↗
Want the same for your business?
If your site is slow, generic, or a pain to update, that is exactly what I fix. Start with a $100 website audit — a plain-English rundown of what is costing you enquiries and what a fix would take. You get it back in full if you go ahead with a build.