Website
Pekoe Trail Trekking
A booking-focused WordPress and ACF site for an SLTDA-licensed trekking operator in Sri Lanka, with a 22-stage trail catalog and a human-reply enquiry flow.
- Client
- Pekoe Trail Trekking
- Year
- 2025
- Role
- Web design & custom WordPress build
- Location
- Sri Lanka
- Services
- WordPress, ACF, PHP, SEO, Booking Enquiry Flow
Overview
Pekoe Trail Trekking is a community-based guided-trek operator in Sri Lanka, licensed by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA). It leads treks along the Pekoe Trail, a 22-stage route through the Central Highlands from Kandy to Ella. The team is led by Deen, who has over 30 years of trekking experience.
The challenge
Most customers arrive through travel forums, TripAdvisor and word of mouth, but the old site couldn't convert them. It had no structured trip catalog, no clear booking path and no social proof at the point of decision. The content is heavy and structured, with 22 stages each carrying an elevation profile, itinerary, photography and seasonal notes, plus multi-day packages. A non-technical team had to be able to edit all of it.
Approach
We built a custom WordPress theme with Advanced Custom Fields (ACF): no page builder and no multi-purpose theme.
- ACF-driven stage pages with typed fields for elevation, distance, difficulty, season and photography. Adding a 23rd stage is a form fill, not a developer ticket.
- Custom post types for trek packages, guide profiles and testimonials. Packages link to their stages automatically.
- Social proof at decision points: testimonials next to the CTA, with the SLTDA licence and 2,300+ completed treks shown as trust chips above the fold.
- Booking enquiry as the main conversion: a short mobile form for dates, group size and preferences. Submissions go to the team inbox for a personal reply within 24 hours.
- Long-tail SEO with stage pages targeting specific trek queries, plus LocalBusiness schema.
- A lean theme that loads quickly for visitors on weak mobile connections.
Custom WordPress is slightly slower than a headless build, but the team gets a faster editing workflow and there is less to maintain. That suits a five-person trekking company. We kept full automated booking and payment out on purpose, because a human reply fits the company's community-based positioning.
Outcome
The live site puts all 22 trail stages on their own pages and shows the SLTDA licence and 2,300+ completed treks as trust signals. Every page ends in a booking enquiry that commits to a reply within 24 hours.
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