The Client
Jill Beth Travel is a boutique, high-touch luxury travel advisory. They work through preferred supplier relationships with AmaWaterways and Windstar for luxury cruises, book luxury hotels through the Virtuoso network, and specialize in Tahiti as a destination.
The Problem We Were Brought In To Fix
JBT’s existing site was running on Genesis with the Studio Press Authority Pro theme, stacked on top of a heavy page builder. That combination had become slow and rigid, and it was actively fighting against the clean, immersive, full-bleed look a premium travel brand needs. The site needed a full rebuild, not a patch job.
Jill and John came to us with a genuine developer specification document, plus a set of reference sites that captured the direction they wanted: Kristen Nix Travel, Fora Travel, Black Tomato, Ourisman Travel, and The Luxury Traveller. Having a brief this detailed meant we could scope and build against a clear, shared definition of “done” from day one, rather than guessing at intent along the way.
What the Brief Asked For
- Positioning — present JBT as a premium luxury cruise and luxury hotel specialist
- Design — an immersive homepage anchored by a full-screen image carousel, generous white space, and a sophisticated but approachable tone, built mobile-first since most luxury travel research starts on a phone
- Brand consistency — work within JBT’s existing colors, typography, and logo, with no rebrand in scope
- Conversion funnel — every relevant page needed to route inquiries into JBT’s Tern booking form, with one consistent CTA hierarchy across the header, hero sections, and service pages
- Site structure — a defined set of core pages (Home, Groups, Cruises, Luxury Hotels, Tahiti, About, FAQs, Contact), each built from a small set of reusable templates
- SEO and AEO — full on-page SEO, question-based H1s for AI Overview optimization, schema markup for the business, FAQs, and services, and a fully preserved URL structure with 301 redirects to protect existing SEO equity
- Performance — Core Web Vitals within Google’s recommended thresholds and a PageSpeed target of 90+ on mobile and desktop
- Platform — a deliberate move off Genesis and Authority Pro and onto GeneratePress and GenerateBlocks, chosen for being lightweight, block-native, and free of the bloat that comes with page builders like Elementor or Divi
How We Built It
We rebuilt the site on GeneratePress and GenerateBlocks alone, adding custom code only where it was needed to hit the specific design details in the brief — rather than reaching for extra plugins or a page builder to paper over gaps. That discipline is what let the site actually hit the brief’s performance and technical goals instead of just approximating them.
Results
- Plugin count dropped from 41 to 4. The original build had accumulated an extraordinary amount of plugin bloat; we pared it down to a lean, purposeful set of four.
- A fast, modern, conversion-focused site that matches the client’s brand and reference sites, and funnels visitors toward inquiries instead of just displaying information.
- A structurally sound foundation, built entirely on GeneratePress and GenerateBlocks, set up to support the SEO, AEO, and performance goals in the original spec.
Cutting plugins from 41 down to 4 says most of what needs to be said about how bloated the old build had gotten — and how much of that weight disappeared once the site was rebuilt on a cleaner, block-native foundation.
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