Features
Villa Engine is all about freedom of choice, flexibility and ownership for vacation rental businesses. We believe that your website should be separate from your PMS or booking platform. Vacation rental website’s aren’t complicated and so as an owner myself, I want to help you create your own.
Design Advantage
WordPress
WordPress is our go to for creating dynamic, powerful and easy to use websites. As the worlds No.1 Content Management System (CMS), WordPress has a massive number of users, developers and third parties that create free and paid-for plugins that let you make WordPress capable of doing just about anything.
Kadence
Where WordPress provides the foundation, we then build on top of that using the Kadence theme and Block plugin. These versatile tools let us build your beautiful and easy to maintain website on top of WordPress. Our themes are built using the free Kadence suite of tools and it is also what lets us provide our cloud library – a library of website sections that you can drop into any page.
Mobile Responsive
Analytics show that vacation rental websites are viewed on mobile and tablet devices more than the desktop, so it is essential that your website looks stunning no matter what the screensize. Not only does WordPress and Kadence offer this out of the box, but you can switch between desktop, tablet and mobile views while you are working on any page to see how it will look.
Flexibility
We have been using WordPress since 2012 and in that time it has grown to become the most popular choice of platform on the internet. We believe vacation rental owners should have freedom and choice with their website. Building your website on WordPress allows it to grow and adapt with your business. In future should you need it to provide eCommerce or membership functionality, there is nothing to stop you. This website really should be the last website you will ever need.
Bookings … Do It Your Way
Websites and booking systems should be separate and operate independently of one another. Websites offered by booking platforms only work with that booking platform which makes it difficult to switch later on. The WordPress platform that we provide works with all booking platforms and payment systems. Where a booking platform isn’t needed, I will recommend booking system plugins that will make it possible to manage bookings and availability from your own website, as well as sync with all the popular OTAs such as AirBnB, HomeAway, VRBO etc.
Create pages the way you like. You can build pages quickly by adding sections at a time from our Cloud Library, or add blocks as you please. Here are just a few of the content you can add to any page.
Technical Advantage
Super-Fast Speeds
Visitors expect websites to load in the blink of an eye. Our obsession with performance has meant that our websites load in less than 500ms. This is made possible with lightening fast hosting, combined with one of the fastest performing WordPress themes available. We layer on top some clever caching and other tools to optimise images. The resulting speeds can be seen in the Google Core Web Vital and GTMetrix tests opposite. If you would like to see how your current website compares, give it a try at https://pagespeed.web.dev/
Security
We have your website secured from head to toe. This starts with the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall that we position in front of your website and the managed hosting platform that ensures that your server is always updated. We also ensure that your traffic is encrypted using a LetsEncrypt SSL certificate and backed up once per day to a remote secure data centre. As an additional layer of protection we use both Malcare Bot Protection and iThemes Security to protect against malicious attacks.
SEO
Search Engine Optimisation is key to appearing in the Google and Bing search results. WordPress does an exceptional job at making your website SEO friendly, but we also employ a specialist SEO plugin that guides you through optimising each page as well as integrate with Google Analytic and Webmaster Console.
Compliance
Depending on where your guests are coming from, there are often regulatory and legal requirements, from GDPR compliance to cookie law and ensuring that your website is fully accessible. Your website includes a privacy policy page ready for you to customise as well as the option to display a cookie notification banner.
Start Fresh or Start Over
If you’re a new business, then this is straightforward. You simply launch your website and start adding content. Most vacation rental owners will have an existing website and will perhaps have gained some traction in the search engines. In this case, we can help guide you through the process of creating your new website in parallel without affecting your existing website. When it is ready to launch we can also advise on the process and important steps needed to ensure a smooth transition.
