Rancho La Puerta

Design and Project Management by Juliana Giacini

Rosebud Designs’ role: WordPress template design, coding, and implementation; consulting for new functions, regular maintenance; integration of third-party booking service.

Rancho La Puerta is a spa and resort located in Tecate, Mexico, and is considered a pioneer in the spa movement. This was an extensive project that involved not just a redesign and a rebuild of their site, but also a re-imagining of their user experience and site flow. The previous site was written entirely in HTML and sprawled over 500 pages. It was difficult to maintain and also had overwhelming navigation and poor flow; even staff members who took reservations and questions over the phone from guests would get lost navigating their own site.

With the new site, the Ranch staff expressed a desire to be able to manage all their own content and be able to integrate an extensive event calendar, a blog, and social media components. The result is the new Rancho La Puerta site, which integrates inviting photography, a simpler navigation bar, and carefully placed calls to action on each page. The original 500 pages were also pared down to almost half, consolidating information where needed. Several complex forms were also integrated into the site so guests could inquire about reservations, book classes and spa treatments, and fill out pre-arrival information.