We’re counting down to Badminton Horse Trials 2023!
One of the biggest events in the British equestrian sporting calendar takes place in the first week of May and Black Nova Designs will be there! We’re talking about Badminton Horse Trials, a five-star three-day event that takes place in the park of Badminton House in Gloucestershire, just a short journey from our offices in Wiltshire. It’s one of only six international five-star events as classified by the Fédération Équestre International that take place each year around the world and sees some of the best horses and riders in the sport of eventing come to the UK to try and win the famous trophy.
This year Badminton Horse Trials take place from Thursday the 4th of May to Monday the 8th of May. This year it’s expected to have an extra-special atmosphere because it’s taking place over the same bank holiday weekend as the nation will celebrate the coronation of King Charles III! Here’s hoping for lots of sunshine shining down on Badminton and all the events taking place on such an iconic weekend. As well as the world-class equestrian competition taking place, there’s also an incredible array of exhibitors and trade stands on site to browse. We always say you could pretty much furnish an entire home (including stables) from a day or two of shopping at Badminton. There’s clothing, footwear, furniture, horsey kit, pet supplies, hot tubs, garden sculptures and amazing food and drink! And, just like last year, Black Nova Designs will be there too!
You’ll find us on stand 164 on Swangrove Street (look out for the distinctive Black Nova Designs gazebo!) and we’ll have goody bags galore and lots of information about our web design, hosting, Wi-Fi, and all our other IT services. Badminton is an excellent opportunity for us to meet with lots of our clients in the equestrian sector and meet potential new customers who are inspired to start their own equine-focused brand. While we work with businesses in all sectors, we’ve forged an excellent reputation for our equestrian and rural website design services.
That journey started because of our director Danielle’s love of horses and excellent networking skills in the industry, and now we are often recommended by our clients and in equine-focused Facebook groups and so on. Of course, the basic principles of web design and hosting are the same regardless of the business the website is for, but equine knowledge is a huge bonus. For example, Danielle’s guidance was very useful when the team was tackling how to add a ‘build a bridle’ feature or a custom cross-country base layer designer for our clients.
We’re proud to now have a portfolio of equestrian websites, and thought we’d share some highlights with you here.
Client satisfaction is always our number one goal, and nothing makes us happier than seeing websites go live and customers getting in touch to say how much of a difference it’s made. One example was for our client Boomerang Stables, a Berkshire-based training centre with a 30-acre cross-country schooling field, a large jumping arena, a full-size outdoor arena and an indoor school. The owners wanted a reliable website that would allow their customers to book their training sessions, cross-country course or arena hire online. It would also mean that Boomerang staff could focus on harrowing arenas and managing the yard without having to answer the telephone or text messages regarding bookings. The website was finished in time for the weekend when Covid-19 restrictions were lifted, and riders were itching to get out and enjoy their horses. The result was lots of people booking slots seamlessly via the new website and a record-breaking weekend of sales for the Boomerang team.
We also built a website for the Event Horse Owners Syndicate (EHOS), an equine start-up that offers shares in event horses with five-star riders for a low one-off annual cost. Started by a then girlfriend and boyfriend (now husband and wife) duo who wanted to make event horse ownership accessible to everyone, EHOS needed their website to do three clear things. They needed it to catch visitors’ eyes with stunning images of the horses and riders, have an ecommerce functionality so that people could buy shares there and then, and have a member’s zone that owners could log in to for updates on their horses. The website was a great success and we’re over the moon to see how well EHOS is doing three years down the line.
These are just two examples of the myriad equestrian websites we have built over the years. We’ve created a dedicated page for our equine-focused website design services which links to our full horsey portfolio, just use this link to take a closer look!
Whether you’re starting a brand-new business and need a website for the first time, or you have an established brand and would like to explore getting your website refreshed, we can help! Just take a look and drop us a line for a free, no-obligation chat about what you need.
If you’re planning to be at Badminton Horse Trials next month then we would love to see you at the stand!
As we said at the start, we’re at stand 164 on Swangrove Street and the team is always happy to answer questions about website design and hosting, as well as the rest of our IT services (which you can explore on our website here). We hope to see you there!