About · A Studio for Character Stays & Country Venues

Kort Bebbington, founder of Elev8depictions

Kort Bebbington Founder · Telford, Shropshire

The studio in 4 paragraphs

I'm Kort. I build websites for the kind of place I'd want to stay.

I started out helping small brands look more premium online, fixing their imagery, rewriting their copy. That work kept leading me to the same realisation: the website wasn't doing the place justice. A 16th-century inn with a fireplace the owner lights every night was being represented by a 2014 Wix template and a Freetobook widget that looked like it belonged on a different planet.

The financial cost of that mismatch is huge. A £180 booking through Booking.com costs the inn ~£27 in commission. Multiply by every weekend, every season, every year. Most independents could pay for a proper website twice over with what they hand to the OTAs in a single month.

I build websites for the kind of place where the owner lights the fire each evening, where dogs come standard, and where the booking engine right now is sending guests to Booking.com instead of taking them direct.

So I narrowed in on the niche. Character stays and country venues. B&Bs, country inns, wedding and event venues across the UK. I know the booking engines (Freetobook, Little Hotelier, eviivo, RoomRaccoon, Inn Style). I know the conversion mechanics (the booking engine handoff, the FAQ schema, the sticky mobile date picker). And I know the voice — the "we light the library fire every evening between October and March" school, not the "our team of dedicated professionals strives" school.

Kort Bebbington Founder · Elev8depictions

The hospitality build playbook

Ten things we test on every stay or venue site, before we hand it over.

The big agencies talk about Cialdini and Kahneman. We read all of that too. But for a B&B owner or venue manager, what actually matters is whether the guest scrolling on a Saturday afternoon can picture themselves there, find the price, and either book direct or book a tour, before they get distracted and open Booking.com in another tab. So that's what we test.

Above the fold, what and where A 16th-century coaching inn in the Shropshire Hills. Within three seconds the visitor knows the category, the place, and the next action. No vague welcomes. Example · Hero line + sticky date picker

Booking engine visually matched Freetobook, Little Hotelier, eviivo, RoomRaccoon and Inn Style all support custom CSS. We style the widget to match the rest of the site so the handoff doesn't break trust. Example · The no.1 direct-booking leak fix

Real wedding gallery (venues only) Real couples, real names (with permission), real dates. Not styled shoots. Couples need to see other couples in the space to picture themselves there. Example · The single highest-converting venue section

Mobile-first, properly 68% of B&B searches and 73% of venue searches start on mobile. Sticky booking bar at the bottom, tap-to-call phone numbers, hero crops shot mobile-first. Example · Sticky "Check availability" bar on every page

Owner voice, sensory specific "We light the library fire every evening between October and March." First-person. Specific detail. No corporate hospitality voice, no "tastefully appointed." Example · The single biggest writing-level differentiator

Pricing visible, no "on enquiry" For B&Bs: live rates via the booking engine. For venues: a starting figure. Pricing transparency filters in serious enquiries and out tyre-kickers. Example · Coton House Farm's published deposit and payment schedule

FAQ schema for AI search Couples and guests are asking AI tools the same questions 50 times a month. FAQ schema gets your answers into Google's AI Overview and ChatGPT search. Example · Parking, breakfast, dogs, cancellation, vendor flex

Google Business Profile fully complete Every category, 30+ photos, opening hours, owner Q&A populated, monthly posts. Google rewards activity and most independents leave this half-built. Example · The fastest local SEO win in the niche

Photography commissioned, not stock A £400 photo shoot beats a £3,000 design refresh. Exterior in golden hour, signature interior, rooms with the bed made and curtains open, detail shots. Example · The highest-ROI investment after the site itself

Short enquiry form (venues) 3 to 5 fields. Name, email, phone, date or "flexible", guest count. Each additional field costs you couples. Qualification happens on the tour, not in the form. Example · 30 to 60% lift in enquiries when forms shrink

+ another 10 we run silently behind the scenes (LodgingBusiness schema, NAP consistency, Hitched listing sync, page speed audits, image dimension reservations) · Ask me about the full list

A studio for
character stays & country venues.

I'm Kort. I build websites for the kind of place I'd want to stay.

Ten things we test on every stay or venue site, before we hand it over.

Want this kind of thinking
applied to your site?

I'm Kort. I build websites for the kind of place I'd want to stay.

Ten things we test on every stay or venue site, before we hand it over.

Want this kind of thinking applied to your site?

Want this kind of thinking
applied to your site?