Phil Moore Studio
Phil Moore Studio   •   June 2026
StoneHouse Bali
Website Review and Recommendations
Prepared for Wendy Kassel stonehousebali.com

01 The Overview

"The photography is excellent and does most of the heavy lifting. The site has strong bones. With a few considered improvements, it will match the quality of what Stone House actually delivers."

We spent time going through stonehousebali.com as a first-time guest would, working through every page carefully. What we found is a site that communicates the soul of Stone House well, but that feeling doesn't carry through from page to page. The individual elements are largely there. What is missing is a unified design language, a clear path for guests to follow, and a handful of structural fixes that would significantly improve both the guest experience and how search engines see your site.

What follows is a full breakdown of our findings, organized by theme and by page. At the end, we outline two directions we could take this work, depending on where you want to focus first.

7
Pages Reviewed
24
Recommendations
9
Quick Wins
2
Paths Forward

02 The Design

The biggest opportunity on this site is not the photography, and it is not the content. It is consistency. Several design elements exist in good form somewhere on the site but are applied unevenly throughout. Below is a full picture of where to focus.

Button System

Three button styles. One site. They need to speak the same language.

Currently the site uses three different button styles: a pill shape in the header "Book Now," a rounded rectangle on inner pages, and a sharp rectangle for the language selector. For a property that communicates sophistication and attention to detail, this inconsistency is something guests notice, even if they cannot name why it feels slightly off.

We recommend standardizing on a three-tier pill button system across the entire site. This creates a clear visual language where guests always know what is a primary action, what is secondary, and what is just a link.

Primary Button

Used for the main action on each page. One per page, placed prominently. Reserve for Book Now or the single most important next step.

Book Your Stay

Filled pill in terracotta. Hard to miss, impossible to confuse with a secondary action.

Secondary Button

For supporting actions that sit alongside the primary. Explore Rooms, Learn More, See All Press. Present without competing.

Explore the Rooms

Outlined pill in dark stone. The guest sees a choice, not a competition.

Tertiary Link

For inline text links, read-more prompts, and low-commitment navigation within content sections.

Read the full story

Text with a clean underline. Guides the eye without demanding attention.

Body Text

The body copy is lighter than it should be.

The current body text uses a light grey that reduces readability, particularly for guests reading on mobile in varied lighting. It also makes the content feel less substantial against a white background. Moving to a warmer, darker tone would improve legibility and give the writing the presence it deserves.

Current

Stone House is a place where you find exactly what you came for: quiet, warmth, and the sense that you are somewhere that exists on its own terms.

Recommended

Stone House is a place where you find exactly what you came for: quiet, warmth, and the sense that you are somewhere that exists on its own terms.

Header

A darker header would change the feel of the entire site immediately.

The current header is white with dark navigation text. It reads as clean, but the contrast against the strong hero photography below it makes the header feel like it belongs to a different page. Testing a dark header, near-black or deep stone brown, would create an immediate lift. The header would feel like it is part of the same visual world as the imagery, rather than sitting above it as a separate object. This is worth A/B testing before committing to, and is a straightforward change in either the current setup or any rebuild.

Footer

Three things need to change in the footer area.

The footer currently has several elements competing for attention without clear hierarchy. Here is what we would address, in order of priority:

I
Move the awards above the footer

Travel + Leisure and Mr and Mrs Smith are significant credentials. They currently sit in a busy footer section where they compete with contact details and social icons. A dedicated "As Seen In" band above the main footer gives them the prominence they deserve and makes them feel like a feature rather than a footnote.

II
Fix the "Designed by" bar

The grey sub-footer bar at the bottom of every page is the single weakest visual element on the site. It should either be absorbed into the footer and styled to match the footer's color scheme, or removed entirely. As it stands, it undermines an otherwise solid footer.

III
Add a Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions

Only a Cancellation Policy is currently linked. A Privacy Policy is legally required for any site collecting contact form submissions or running analytics tracking. Both can be generated quickly and do not require a lawyer for a property of this size. We can handle both for you.

03 Page by Page

Below is a summary of our recommendations for each page. Items are tagged by priority: Quick Win can be done immediately with minimal effort. Structural requires more planning or design work. Architectural involves larger changes to how content is organized or built.

Homepage

Strong where it matters. Two things to address.

  • 1
    Add the Instagram handle and a direct link to the Instagram section.Quick Win
    The embed exists but gives guests no reason to follow. Adding @stonehousebali and a profile link turns a passive widget into an active relationship builder.
  • 2
    Standardize all Book Now buttons to the pill shape used in the header.Quick Win
    The mid-page CTA uses a different shape. This is a global styles change in Divi that applies across every page at once.
About

The content is excellent. The structure needs work to do it justice.

  • 1
    Add a hero image to the top of the page.Structural
    Every other page opens with a full-bleed photograph. About begins with raw text. A hero image of Walker, Wendy, or the property from a personal angle would set the tone before a guest reads a word.
  • 2
    Add subheadings throughout the page.Quick Win
    Almost all content sits under a single "About Us" heading. Natural breaks exist in the content, for the construction story, the team, sustainability, and social responsibility. Adding headings here also benefits SEO.
  • 3
    Fix the image alternation in the Meet the Team section.Quick Win
    This section breaks the image-left / text-right rhythm established above it. A simple Divi row-reorder corrects it.
  • 4
    Add a closing CTA section.Quick Win
    The page ends without pointing anywhere. A "View Our Rooms" or "Book Your Stay" section gives guests a clear next step rather than leaving them to navigate back on their own.
  • 5
    Expand the Lulu and Bella sections.Structural
    These sections feel lighter compared to the rest of the page. A few additional sentences, with a warm tribute note reflecting on their years at Stone House, would give these sections the care they deserve.
Rooms

Good layout. Two improvements that would meaningfully increase guest engagement.

  • 1
    Replace scrollable galleries with a clickable thumbnail grid and lightbox.Structural
    Most guests will not realize each room's gallery scrolls. A small row of clickable thumbnail images that opens a full lightbox is standard on boutique hotel sites and significantly increases the time guests spend looking at rooms.
  • 2
    Consider giving each room its own page.Architectural
    Individual room URLs (e.g., /rooms/longhouse/) would improve SEO, allow for richer per-room content, and make individual rooms much easier to share or link to directly. This is a meaningful project but a high-value one.
Experience

There is a structural issue here that needs attention before design work can hold.

The current /experience/ page is loading a WordPress blog post from 2018, formatted with an author byline, a post date, and a comment submission form. This is not a designed Experience landing page. The experiences appear to live as blog posts organized by category tags, but no proper archive or landing page exists to present them. This needs to be resolved at the architecture level first.

  • 1
    Create a proper Experience landing page.Architectural
    A page that presents each experience visually and links through to longer blog content, rather than rendering the raw blog post with a comment form.
  • 2
    Move the hero overlay text below the image.Quick Win
    Text overlaid on a busy photograph is difficult to read. Moving it below the hero image and above the experience grid would improve legibility with minimal effort.
Gallery

Strong imagery. Very little for search engines to work with.

  • 1
    Add introductory text and section headings.Quick Win
    A gallery page with no text cannot be indexed meaningfully by Google. A single paragraph and headings by section (Food, Rooms, Amenities, Things To Do) gives crawlers something to work with and guests an easier way to navigate the page.
  • 2
    Embed any existing video content directly on this page.Structural
    If the property has video, embedding it here increases time on site and keeps guests on your page rather than leaving to find it on YouTube or Instagram.
Press

The strongest supporting page on the site. A few additions make it complete.

  • 1
    Add a semi-transparent overlay to cards with busy background images.Quick Win
    Several article cards have text that is difficult to read against the background photo. A dark gradient across the lower half of each card resolves this sitewide without requiring Photoshop work per image.
  • 2
    Add a brief introductory paragraph at the top of the page.Quick Win
    A single short sentence gives search engines context about what this page is, and gives PR contacts visiting specifically for press enquiries an immediate landing point.
  • 3
    Make the media contact section more prominent.Structural
    A clearly labelled media contact section at the bottom of the Press page, with a name and email address, serves journalists and PR contacts who land here looking for exactly that.
A note on Book Now buttons sitewide

The homepage has Book Now buttons throughout. Almost every other page does not. The About, Gallery, Press, and Experience pages have none. The rule should be simple: every page ends with a clear next step. For most pages this means a Book Now section. For About it could be "Explore Our Rooms." This is a quick win on each page individually, and a global design pattern change on Path A or B.

04 The Black Book

This section deserves its own chapter because the opportunity here is larger than a simple page improvement. The Black Book content is genuinely excellent, and right now it is doing very little work for the property beyond serving guests who are already staying with you.

"The Black Book contains exactly the kind of insider knowledge that guests search for before booking a trip to Ubud. Right now, it sits behind a login. That is a missed opportunity."

Search terms like "best restaurants in Ubud," "things to do in Ubud," and "where to stay near Ubud" receive thousands of searches each month. Stone House has the content to appear for some of these. It just needs to be publicly accessible and properly structured.

What we recommend
1
Create a Black Book landing page

A visual table of contents where each category (Dining, Things To Do, Religion and Culture, Around Stone House, Travel Info) appears as its own card, linking through to a dedicated subpage.

2
Make the public content public

Content broadly useful to any visitor to Ubud, dining recommendations, cultural guides, what to visit, should be accessible without a login. This is content that builds trust with guests who are still deciding whether to book with you.

3
Keep the sensitive content gated

Property-specific information, check-in details, house guidelines, and exclusive contacts, can remain behind the existing password protection. Guests who are staying with you get the full picture. Everyone else gets a great reason to book.

The SEO opportunity

Making the general content publicly accessible means Stone House could appear in search results for guests who have not yet discovered the property. A well-written "where to eat in Ubud" page that links back to the hotel is a genuine new guest acquisition channel, and one that grows over time as you continue to add to it.

Content we would restructure
Dining in Ubud Things To Do Religion and Culture Travel Info Around Stone House Gated: Guests Only

05 Two Paths Forward

This is where we want your honest input. Before we scope anything or attach timelines, we wanted to lay out both options clearly so you can decide what feels right for where Stone House is headed. No pricing is attached to this document. This conversation is about direction first.

Path A
A Fresh Start in Framer
Our recommendation for getting the most done, the right way, in the shortest time.

The current site runs on WordPress with a Divi page builder (not Squarespace, as the developer may have led you to believe). While WordPress is capable, Divi adds a significant layer of complexity to making clean, consistent design changes across the site. A rebuild on Framer would give us a blank canvas, allowing us to implement every recommendation in this document properly rather than working around the existing structure.

What this gets you
  • ✓
    A consistent design system from day one, with buttons, typography, and color applied uniformly across every page
  • ✓
    Native page-level password protection for the Black Book, built into Framer, no plugin required
  • ✓
    CMS support for the Black Book and Experience content, so new articles appear automatically in the right places
  • ✓
    Little Hotelier booking links work identically on any platform, so nothing changes for the guest booking flow
  • ✓
    A faster, cleaner site that is significantly easier to maintain and build on over time
  • ✓
    Clean SEO foundations built from scratch, without legacy URL structures or plugin dependencies
This path is more work upfront, but delivers a cleaner result with fewer compromises. It may also be faster than you expect, because we are not constrained by the existing Divi setup.
Path B
Improving What's There
For phasing the work over time, within the current WordPress site.

If a full rebuild is not the right move right now, we can work through the recommendations in this document in three phases, entirely within the existing WordPress and Divi setup. No migration, no new platform to learn, no disruption to anything that is currently working.

Phase 1: Quick Wins

Standardize all buttons to pill shape via a single global Divi change. Add Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions. Add CTA sections to About, Press, Gallery, and Experience. Fix the image alternation on About. Update page title tags across the site. Add dark overlays to the busier Press article cards. Add the Instagram handle and profile link.

Phase 2: Structural Improvements

Add a hero image to About. Add subheadings throughout About. Add thumbnail lightbox galleries to the Rooms page. Add introductory text and headings to Gallery and Press. Expand Lulu and Bella sections. Fix the "Designed by" bar. Move Travel + Leisure and Mr and Mrs Smith to a dedicated band above the footer.

Phase 3: Architecture

Rebuild the Experience page as a proper landing page. Create individual room pages with their own URLs. Restructure the Black Book as a navigable, categorized section with public and gated content. Add guest testimonials to the homepage or About page. Add a Google Maps embed to the Contact page.

This path preserves the existing investment and is easier to start immediately. Phase 3, however, is where Divi starts to become a genuine constraint, and some of that work may be more naturally suited to a cleaner platform anyway.

06 From Here

We did not attach pricing to this document intentionally. Before we scope anything, we want to understand which direction feels right to you. There is no wrong answer. Path A gets more done with fewer compromises. Path B is more gradual and preserves what is already there. Both arrive at the same place over time.

1
Review
Read through this document at your own pace. Share it with Walker if that would be helpful.
2
Decide
Let us know which path feels right, or come back with questions before you decide.
3
Scope
Once we know the direction, we will put together a proper scope with timelines and costs attached.
4
Begin
We start with the quick wins either way. Some of these can be done before the broader project even begins.

"The site should feel the same way Stone House does: unhurried, considered, and entirely itself."

That is what we are working toward together.

Prepared by
Phil Moore Studio
hello@phil-moore.com
For
StoneHouse Bali
June 2026