About Santo da Serra Golf
Clube de Golf Santo da Serra is a World Golf Award-winning Golf Club located in Santo da Serra, Madeira Island, with three challenging and beautiful courses featuring the World’s best par 3 hole, where you can look over the bay of Machico, and the Desertas islands on the horizon, a protected nature reserve.
This spectacular 27-hole golf course, originally established in 1937, underwent a complete redesign in 1991 by renowned golf architect Robert Trent Jones Sr. The course consists of three distinct 9-hole layouts, Machico, Desertas, and Serras courses, and a beautiful clubhouse featuring a restaurant and pro golf shop.
Project goals
Develop a highly user-friendly solution, revamp website content, and simplify navigation to create a user experience that appeals to a wide range of age groups, increasing engagement and bookings. Provide staff with an easier way to publish and update content, including both public and members-only news, and introduce a streamlined process for posting new tournaments and quickly publishing results.
- Rebuild the previous website with a new CMS, migrate the Content Management System from Joomla to WordPress
- Create a clean, simple and effective interface allowing users to easily navigate the website sections on all devices (mobile, iPad and desktop)
- Increase website conversion rates on tee time bookings
- Create a members-only area where only valid members can access internal club information, register their tournament participation, follow-up results and rankings
- Implement a member notification system that allows Santo da Serra Golf to notify members by profile and language regarding their public and private activities, including tournaments and other relevant events.
- Add extensive information about the Club’s history and course details, highlighting its heritage and identity for locals, members, and tourists.
Our Approach
Following a thorough initial requirements validation, the initial meeting with the client’s team helped identify key hidden business challenges. The existence of an extensive library of content was used to reimagine the project solution and create the new sitemap that reflected the new, less complex content structure, optimized for better SEO performance and an enhanced user experience.
Based on the requirements, it was clear that the project should be built with WordPress, with minimal plugins for better performance and maintenance. Given that the clients wanted the ability to easily edit the website, Elementor was the choice as the user-friendly page builder.
The project kicked off with content collection and curation. We then used that content and designed a high-fidelity website mockup in Figma (both desktop and mobile).
After the design was approved, we built the website with a custom membership area and backend publishing tools optimized for consistent front-end display. Content and copywriting were reviewed with the client through agile workflows to align with weekly milestones. As a multilingual platform for a golf club serving locals and international tourists visiting Madeira, we managed all the content curation and SEO optimization to improve search engine visibility and indexing in large language models. We also integrated tracking tools for visitor and member activity, securing full compliance with cookies and GDPR.
The publishing process, among other optimizations, included performance optimizations and the redirection of outdated and low-quality backlinks to protect search rankings and improve SEO after public launch.
Outcome
The redesigned website delivered a clean, intuitive, and mobile-optimized experience for both members and visitors. It provided the client with a powerful yet easy-to-manage CMS, dramatically improved the publishing processes, increased booking flows, and created a stronger digital presence that reflects the club’s history and international appeal.
