Nucleus creates ‘seductive’ website for The Goring hotel

Designed by digital consultancy Nucleus, the site features full-screen imagery to ‘seduce’ potential customers online.

The site is built so that these images automatically resize to fit different screen resolutions. ‘To resize images in this way you would normally design in Flash, but that’s problematic because it doesn’t work on Apple devices, such as the iPad, and it compromises what you can do in terms of search engine optimisation,’ says Nucleus managing director Peter Matthews.

With a number of luxury hotel openings and refurbishments upcoming, including The Four Seasons and The Corinthia in London, attracting potential customers online is crucially important, says Matthews. He adds, ‘You must intercept customers via search, so we used Dynamic HTML instead of Flash for the site.’

Nucleus also art-directed photography for a number of ‘hero’ shots used by the hotel online, as well as providing stylistic principles for future imagery. The consultancy was appointed to the project last October on the strength of its previous work in the luxury hotel and goods sector.

When The Goring opened in 1910 it was the first hotel in the world to offer en suite facilities and central heating in every bedroom. Its interiors feature work by British interior designers including Nina Campbell and Russell Sage.