Hinton Workspace Case Study

Client

Hinton Workspace — a coworking space and flexible office provider in North Dorset, part of the Hinton St Mary Estate.

The Challenge

Two years ago, Hinton Workspace had a WordPress website. Like many WordPress sites built for service businesses, it had become difficult to work with. The team managing the site wanted something faster, simpler, and more tightly integrated with their operational systems.

The core frustrations were familiar to anyone running a coworking space:

Clunky plugin ecosystem slowing the site down
Events management felt disconnected from how the team actually worked
Limited ability to track or understand member interactions
Integration with their workspace management system (SpaceBring) was awkward
Adding features meant finding plugins, not building solutions

They needed a website that didn't get in the way. It needed to work for their reception team, convert visitors into tour bookings, and move at the speed of a modern business.

What We Built

We rebuilt Hinton Workspace as a modern, headless web application using:

Next.js — for a fast, responsive front-end that loads instantly
Sanity CMS — allowing the team to manage content without technical knowledge
Custom integrations — directly to Keap CRM for bookings and SpaceBring for workspace operations
No plugin bloat — instead, purpose-built features that do exactly what they need

The site launched on Friday, 21 March 2026 — just over one week ago.

What You Actually See

Speed That Works

HInton_Workspace_Website.png

The old WordPress site worked, but it felt slow. The new site doesn't. We built it properly.

Lighthouse scores on desktop:

Performance: 100/100
Accessibility: 93/100
Best Practices: 100/100
SEO: 100/100

Mobile performance is equally strong at 96/100. These aren't theoretical numbers. A real person opening Hinton Workspace on their phone right now will experience a site that loads fast and stays fast.

This matters. A slow website costs you members and tours. Speed is a conversion tool.

Clean, Smooth Interactions

The homepage video plays without slowing anything down. The mega menu opens instantly when you hover over "Workspaces". The five workspace types (Coworking Desks, Meeting Rooms, The Workshop, The Sitting Room, The Clerk's Office) all show with beautiful photography and clear descriptions.

Two clear calls to action sit front and centre: "Book a Desk" and "Book a Tour". These aren't afterthoughts. They're the entire purpose of the site.

When someone clicks "Book a Tour", they're taken to a Keap CRM form that captures their details, qualifies their interest, and automatically creates a follow-up task for the reception team. No manual data entry. No spreadsheet juggling. It just works.

Events That Actually Manage Themselves

The old site had an events plugin. It was another thing to maintain, another point of friction.

We built a custom events system that lives inside Sanity CMS. The reception team can add a new event in minutes. It updates automatically on the website. It syncs to SpaceBring so availability is always accurate. No separate tools. No confusion.

Right now, Hinton hosts "The Hustle" — a monthly networking event for entrepreneurs and business owners. Events like these are community value. They should be easy to showcase and manage. Now they are.

Search Visibility Built In

A fast, clean website is the foundation for search visibility. We've also structured the site properly for modern search — both traditional Google search and AI-generated search results from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.

This is increasingly important. When someone searches "coworking spaces North Dorset" or asks an AI "where can I find a meeting room near Shaftesbury", Hinton Workspace now appears.

The site can evolve into a full AISEO (Artificial Intelligence Search Engine Optimisation) hub as Hinton's visibility strategy develops.

Why This Matters

This isn't a story about technology for its own sake. Every decision we made served a single purpose: make it easier for Hinton Workspace to attract members and bookings.

For the team

The reception team updates events in Sanity. It's straightforward.
When someone books a tour, Keap handles the follow-up automatically.
They're not fighting with WordPress plugins or plugin conflicts.
When something needs fixing or changing, it happens fast.

For visitors

The site loads instantly on mobile and desktop.
Information is clear and well-organised.
Booking a tour is a single click. No friction.
They see professional photography of actual spaces, not generic stock images.

For the business

Lighthouse performance scores (100, 93, 100, 100) mean the site is technically excellent.
Tight integrations mean bookings feed directly into operations.
The foundation is built for AI search visibility, an increasingly important channel.
When the business grows or changes, the website grows with it.

What Happened Next

The site launched Friday and is now live. It's capturing tour requests through the booking system, integrating with Keap CRM, and serving as the public face of the workspace.

Real impact will show up in conversion rates over the coming weeks and months. We'll watch tour request volume, response times, and member sign-ups. But we already know the foundation is solid.

The Lesson

A workspace like Hinton isn't complicated. The website shouldn't be either.

WordPress is powerful. For some projects, it's exactly right. But when your business relies on clean integrations, fast load times, and a team that wants simplicity, a custom-built headless solution wins every time.

The old site worked. The new site works faster, costs less to maintain, and gives the team tools that actually fit their business.

That's what modern web development should look like.

Site: https://hintonworkspace.co.uk/

Location: North Dorset, UK

Launch Date: 21 March 2026

Tech Stack: Next.js, Sanity CMS, Keap CRM, SpaceBring Integration