Round Pond Estate:
A customer-first design for Rutherford’s most hospitable tasting room

Problem

Round Pond Estate’s website had grown with the estate, to more than four hundred pages and posts, every one of them built in a page builder that tied the content to the old theme. Round Pond wanted a home it could keep: a site its own team could run and add to, that made it easy for guests to discover the estate, shop and book a visit, and that would never need rebuilding just to keep up with the business.

Background

We began in January 2025 with one aim, more visits to the estate. For a year we ran the advertising and its landing pages, and recorded heatmaps and user journeys on the old site. By the time the website came into scope, we knew what Round Pond’s guests came for and how they booked.

Solution

That data shaped the new site, which launched in 2026 on a custom WordPress theme and our enhanced Commerce7 integration. Booking takes the center stage, so a visitor need not exit the site to reserve their tasting. A streamlined club page helps the reader easily select and sign up. Product search and custom product and collection pages make the shop easy to browse, and Honouren, Round Pond’s wine in support of Alzheimer’s research, has a place of its own.

Three Round Pond Estate pages: home, Gravel Series membership and Visit
The Round Pond Estate Olive Oil Experiences page on a phone
The Round Pond Estate Gravel Series page on a phone

Advertising first, website second

Round Pond’s goals are easy to state: more visits, more members, more sales, and a stronger name for the Gravel Series and Honouren. Our work began with the ads that serve those goals, and the website came once a year of campaigns had shown what it needed to do.

Strategy

Built an annual multi-channel campaign calendar with the Round Pond team and met regularly to steer it.

Advertising

Conceived, built and optimized Facebook and Instagram campaigns, with audiences drawn from pixel data and customer lists.

Landing pages

Built campaign landing pages and set up advanced Commerce7 conversion tracking to connect ad spend to sales.

Website design

Used a year of campaign and analytics data to plan and design a new custom WordPress and Commerce7 site.

SEO

Applied technical SEO at launch and watched Search Console for 30 days to catch broken links and redirects.

Accessibility

Arranged third-party ADA testing of the new site’s templates, with weekly scans against WCAG 2.2 AA.

Heatmaps and user journeys

Recorded heatmaps and user journeys on the old site to find where its design was holding ads back.

Hosting and care

Hosted and maintained the site on a managed server behind Cloudflare, with daily backups and security scans.

Pieces of the Round Pond Estate website and phone screens, from tasting experiences and private events to the shop and wine club

Before and after

The Round Pond olive mill page now: the olive grove, a booking widget and three bookable olive oil experiences The Round Pond olive mill page in June 2025: Olive Oil Experiences over two tasting descriptions with reservation buttons Before 5forestsAfter 5forests
The Round Pond Gravel Series page now: Acquire the Gravel Series over the three wines and their scores The Round Pond Gravel Series membership page in June 2025: a banner, one block of text and the footer Before 5forestsAfter 5forests
The Round Pond home page now: the palm-lined drive to the estate under Taste Rutherford at Round Pond The Round Pond home page in June 2025: an aerial vineyard photograph with Visit and Shop buttons Before 5forestsAfter 5forests