Bancroft Cruisers

The brief

Bancroft Cruisers run bespoke private charters on the River Avon aboard The Rita Ellen, and they are the only Stratford river cruise with a live local guide on board. The business was excellent and the website was not: a dated WordPress build that buried what they offered and made no distinction between a wedding, a school trip and a corporate afternoon. The brief was to reorganise the site around the day someone is actually planning, and to make enquiring feel as easy as the trip itself.

What we did

• Rebuilt from scratch in Next.js, replacing the dated WordPress and LiteSpeed setup
• Restructured the content around the occasion rather than the boat: weddings and celebrations, corporate, groups and coach parties, schools, and party cruises each get their own space
• A dedicated page for The Rita Ellen herself, covering the things that decide a booking: heated and fully enclosed, a wheelchair lift, and the on-board guide
• Catering brought forward from a buried list to a real part of the offer, from cream teas through to a riverside barbecue
• Charter enquiry route built around how these bookings actually start, with phone and email in reach throughout rather than a single form at the end
• Social proof surfaced live rather than left as a dated badge
• Local search set up around Stratford river cruises and private charters, the terms visitors actually use
• Built so availability, menus and news can be kept current in-house without coming back to us

The numbers

What we said no to

• Keeping the old structure. The content was reorganised around the day being planned, because that is the decision a visitor is actually making.
• A single generic enquiry form. Charters start as conversations, so phone and email stay visible throughout.
• A static review badge. Social proof only works when it is current.

Common questions

• How do you rebuild a tourism website without losing the bookings you already get?

  You keep what is working and restructure what is not. Bancroft Cruisers kept their domain, their reputation and their existing search presence; what changed was the organisation, so a visitor planning a wedding and a visitor booking a school trip each land somewhere written for them rather than a single generic page.

• Should a charter or tour business have a separate page for each type of trip?

  Yes, when the trips are genuinely different. Bancroft run weddings, corporate days, coach parties, school trips and party cruises, and each has different questions, different pricing logic and different reassurance needed. One combined page answers none of them properly and ranks for none of them well.

• What does a private hire business need on its website?

  The things that actually decide the booking. For Bancroft that meant the boat being heated and fully enclosed, the wheelchair lift, the live local guide, and the catering range from cream teas to a riverside barbecue. Those details answer the questions that otherwise become a phone call before anyone commits.

• Can we update the website ourselves afterwards?

  Yes. Availability, menus and news are all editable in-house, which is the part that matters for a seasonal business. Nothing goes stale waiting for a developer.

Stack

• Next.js (App Router)
• React
• TypeScript
• Tailwind CSS
• Vercel