June has been a busy month for Fanatic. After over 20 years at the Tobacco Factory, we have moved into our new studio – Courage House, at the Old Brewery. The team has also been busy providing excellent work for our clients, including conducting website A/B testing, creating a 3D English pub-style design for J O Hambro’s conference stand, designing the logo and animation for the Bristol Waiters’ Race, and so much more. Here’s what we’ve been up to.
Courage House, originally built in 1831 by the founder of Ashton Gate Brewery, is a historic Georgian townhouse that has been used for decades as an office and was ready to be totally renovated and set up for a new chapter. To transform the building into a modern, creative studio, we opened up the layout with a new central staircase and a steel skeleton to support the removed walls, while carefully restoring original features. We loved discovering the 200-year-old brick chimney breast, renovating the wall and the fireplace to make a feature in our studio. Staying true to our North Street community and our commitment to sustainability, we designed the space for maximum carbon neutrality. The roof is packed with solar panels and we have batteries to store surplus energy. This completely powered our cooling system during the record heatwave when we moved in this June , so needless to say, the air conditioning has been a big hit with the whole team, as has the vibrant outdoor space of the courtyard.
This has been a project that has been very intense and we can’t believe we have gone from a shell to a beautifully finished studio in four months! It has been a labour of love with many a late night but we are so proud and excited by what has been created. The new open-plan layout features a mix of formal meeting rooms, soft breakout spaces, and standing desks with plenty of space to support our growing team. It has transformed how our teams collaborate, socialise, and work together. There is a real buzz in Courage House and we feel incredibly lucky to have a studio with such history – it is a great new chapter for Fanatic.
To create this, we built the scene in 3D so we could have full control over the layout, lighting and composition. Then we were able to render this as a huge graphic, which could be printed for the show. With the addition of a real dart board and giveaway pint glasses, the outcome was really something standout!
The finished design looked great and had heads turning at the event. We’re always excited to work on interesting projects that have real-world applications!
The talk was hosted by Jonathan Bossenger, who discussed how, for many years, the community has continually criticised WordPress, and have had outdated opinions towards its “antiquated” programming patterns and PHP standards. But here we are in a time and place where WordPress is still very much ingrained in the industry, widely used for all sorts of purposes, such as brochure websites, e-commerce stores, and paired with custom integrations.
Jonathan goes on to mention that WordPress has come a long way over the years, and has made leaps and bounds towards improving programming practices, performance, security and improving the overall quality of life of the CMS.
It is still very important that the right tool or platform is used for the particular application, but WordPress has and continues to evolve, improve and stay relevant. It should still very much be seriously considered as the right tool for the job.
Shopping ads are also getting smarter, with AI-generated product summaries helping searchers understand what they’re buying before they even visit a site. The flip side is less traffic, but better qualified. For lead gen and B2B, there’s now the option to embed an AI agent directly into ads to answer questions and capture leads in the moment.
Perhaps the most eyebrow-raising change is Universal Commerce Protocol expanding to let users book directly on Google — integrating with the likes of Uber Eats, Booking.com, and Expedia — meaning fewer people will ever need to visit your website at all.
Our Paid Team has written up the full breakdown on the blog, well worth a read if paid media is part of your world.
Our SEO team recently performed an A/B test on a restaurant client’s homepage, pitting their existing banner against a new image carousel showing food, guests, and the space itself. The hypothesis was simple: would showing visitors more of the actual dining experience up front lead to more bookings?
The results were pretty convincing. Bounce rate dropped by nearly 75%, reservations more than doubled in absolute terms, and overall conversions per visit were up 68%. The carousel works because it gives visitors an immediate read on the restaurant the moment they land, rather than asking them to wait for an atmospheric video that communicates relatively little about the actual experience.
A secondary change, moving the menu button to a more prominent position, also drove a big jump in menu engagement, a useful reminder that sometimes the simplest UX tweaks have an outsized impact.
If you’d like to learn more about how we approach SEO and conversion-focused website improvements, explore our SEO services today.