Merne At Lighthouse
Website Design & VideographyAbout The Client
Merne at Lighthouse offers contemporary, ‘shared’ style dining in a relaxed restaurant environment; overlooking the established ‘Lighthouse Oil’ olive grove and emerging ‘Oakdene’ vines; across the water to Queenscliff, Point Lonsdale and Point Nepean.
Situated in the heart of the Bellarine Peninsula, Merne is central to Drysdale, Ocean Grove, Barwon Heads, Portarlington, St Leonards, Queenscliff, Point Lonsdale, Curlewis and Wallington; a 15-20 minute drive from Geelong and located just an hour outside of Melbourne.
The Client’s Problem
The client contacted Propeld to help them modernise their website and to highlight their business as being a premium dining venue on The Bellarine.
While the client had an existing website that had served them well for several years, the site was lacking in visual appeal and did not illustrate the unique shared dining experience the restaurant offers to its customers.
Upgrading the reservation booking system from ‘The Fork’ to something more customer friendly, cost effective and easier to manage reservations with was a high priority for the business.
The site needed to be appealing to potential wedding couples and to make it easy for them to view their packages and enquire about booking the venue.
Merne required a system to allow them to talk to their existing customers about events and updates without relying on their social media channels.
The Propeld Solution
Propeld worked alongside the client to ensure that the website accurately represented the restaurant’s unique setting and showcased its stunning location.
The strategy of the website was to capture customers at whatever stage of the buyer journey they were at and funnel them through to the point of conversion. We upgraded the booking system on the website to ‘Now Book It’ which manages bookings, event management and gift voucher purchases all in a central system.
We used their existing customer database, from The Fork, to create a mailing list and developed email templates for promoting special events, menu changes and a general newsletter. We also implemented a variety of opt-in forms that allow customers to signup to their newsletter and enquire about wedding packages. We also created an automated system to encourage past wedding couples to return to the venue to celebrate their anniversary at the place they were wed.
A major part of the website rebuild was to make it more visual and highlight the shared dining experience offered to Merne customers. We achieved this by adding multiple image libraries throughout the website and by directing and filming a short video that tells the story of the Merne food, drinks and atmosphere. The video was also split up into shorts that could be used on social media to highlight different aspects of the restaurant.