Building a High-Performance Property Marketing Website for Highland Property Media
In June 2026, MBD teamed up with Highland Property Media to build a new website for this startup near Inverness.
Highland Property Media, founded by Stefan Slavovski, offers photography, drone images, floor plans, and viewing services for people who want to sell, auction, or rent properties in the Highlands of Scotland.
I’ve known Stefan for several years. About five years ago, he first talked to me about this business idea. Back then, he decided to focus on his other successful ventures in property and holiday rentals around Inverness.
Now, in 2026, Stefan felt it was the right time to launch this new business and offer services he saw were missing in the local area and beyond.
He wanted a website that would clearly present his services and packages, and let users book by choosing available dates from a calendar. Reducing friction for customers became the main goal for the new site.
Building a Website Ready for Long-Term Growth
Since Highland Property Media is brand new, it has no digital presence yet, either locally or nationally. Many new business owners don’t realize this challenge. They often compete with established companies that already have strong reputations. While it’s not impossible to catch up, it does require a plan to quickly build an online presence.
Highland Property Media will operate locally, but in the Highlands of Scotland, ‘local’ covers a wider area. Towns are far apart here, so local targeting includes places that are quite a distance from Inverness.
We also needed to build trust in the brand. This meant starting early, asking for reviews from past work, and talking about the brand well before the website launched.
The website also needed to be easy to scale as Stefan’s business grows, new projects come up, and news is shared. Planning for this means thinking ahead about what content will be needed. That’s why a content management system was the best choice.
What the Website Needed to Achieve
The main goal was to create a new brand, so the website had to communicate that clearly. Building trust was also important. A new brand can appear suddenly, but how it presents itself and its services affects early success. To build trust, the website needed to feel as professional as an established brand.
Getting enquiries is key for any business, and Stefan wanted to attract new clients. Instead of just a contact form or email, he asked for a booking system where users could pick a date from his calendar. They also needed to be able to choose and build a package that fit their needs.
It should gMany new sites still don’t meet this standard, but it’s essential for the website to work well on mobile. Most people use mobile devices, and with Google’s mobile-first ranking, it’s important to design a site that scores as high as possible on Google PageSpeed. is becoming more prevalent as of this writing. To ensure the website can be protected for future SEO operations, it needs to be built in a way that complements it. That means a focus on accessibility, semantic HTML, and content structured so search engines can crawl more easily.
Why We Chose WordPress
We needed a solid, well-supported CMS for the project, and everything on the site had to be editable after launch. There are many CMS options, but we chose WordPress. I’ve worked with WordPress for over ten years, so I know it well. Plus, WordPress has lots of documentation, so if Stefan works with another developer later, they can easily update or expand the site. It’s also strong in SEO, gets regular updates, and since it’s open source, there are no extra fees or subscriptions.
My years of working with WordPress have given me real confidence in building a custom theme that fits the client’s needs. There are quicker ways, like buying a pre-made theme or using a page builder such as Elementor, but I don’t use those. To meet the site’s goals, creating a custom theme was the best choice. This approach allows full customization, control over the HTML, less code bloat than page builders, and fewer plugins, which can also help with security.
WordPress also includes the Block Editor, previously called Gutenberg, which gives much more control over creating and editing templates. I’ve used this since it was released in WP5, so I was confident I could match the Figma pattern library, where I had made several blocks to help Stefan build and edit content.
Choosing a custom template also meant we didn’t need many extra plugins. Agencies and developers often use plugins as shortcuts, but they can create security risks and slow down your website. It’s also harder to edit their code, and some plugins require extra payments to stay updated.
Designing Around Performance
As mentioned earlier, we focused on performance and aimed for high scores in Google’s PageSpeed Insights. This meant building a site that meets many of Google’s Core Web Vitals.
The first step was to use a mobile-first design. While this idea isn’t new, many designers still start with desktop layouts because they’re easier to show clients. By starting with mobile, we could scale up and avoid the compromises that often happen when converting desktop designs to mobile.
A custom theme allows for lightweight code and less JavaScript, which often slows down websites. A smaller, cleaner HTML structure should also help with AI search and make the site more future-proof.
Media can slow down a website, which is a challenge for Highland Property Media since it relies on images and video to showcase services. To help with this, we used WebP compression to shrink file sizes without losing quality. Images are also lazy-loaded, so they only load when needed.
All these steps help improve PageSpeed scores, but better performance also makes the site easier to use. A slow, clunky site can frustrate users and make them think less of your business. As the saying goes, “If the site performs badly, maybe the business does too.”
Structuring the Content
Earlier, I mentioned building a structure that could work well for AI search in the future. This involved creating content pillars—groups of related content that link together, making it easier for AI and search engines to find and understand the information.
Many people see a sitemap as a simple list, but it’s more complex than that. First, you need to know which services Stefan wants to highlight, then create content around them to make them stand out.
Besides content pillars, adding helpful FAQs is important. These are questions potential customers might ask about similar services, which can help HPM appear in Google’s Rich Snippets. Help and advice pages can make these answers even stronger by giving more detailed information about selling property.
The Results
So, how did it turn out?
At launch, the website scored 93 for performance and 100 for accessibility, SEO, and best practices—all on mobile. By meeting these goals, the site now has a much better chance of ranking well thanks to its strong mobile performance.
We also did extensive mobile testing before launch to make sure almost all users would get the same great performance.
We kept loading times short by picking a hosting plan that works well with WordPress. We also used a caching system to speed up load times and store the most-used database queries.
Client Outcome
For Stefan, I wanted to deliver an agency-level experience without the high costs. Using my years of agency web development experience, I built a website from start to finish that met his business needs.
Stefan now has a business site that looks great, tells his story, and quickly builds trust in his new brand through a strong user experience. He has all the tools he needs to help his business grow, and from everyone at Morgan Baker Development, I wish him the best for the future.
