Website Redesign with Blogging and SEO in mind

Our family began offering tours of our botanical garden on Kauai last August. Initially, my folks didn't want a true website, just a static page with a slideshow and our phone number for tour reservations. I convinced them to make something a little more substantial and we got a dirt cheap programmer to design our site based on the WordPress platform

Of course, since then my folks have gotten all sorts of feedback from friends and acquaintances: "why don't you show up right away on Google, why aren't there more pictures, why don't you try this, why don't you try that?" Being semi-tech savvy I explained that we need to spend more than $300 to get the features they brought up and that it would take a lot of my extra time to optimize our site and keep it up to date for SEO needs. The WordPress platform was great--it's very easy for me to use, and so far it has been adequate for our needs. There are some issues the designer never resolved for me: the blog won't easily link to Facebook, and the meta-data keyword tags for blog posts all aggregate at the bottom of the screen, which is tacky and will make the page unmanageable in the long term when I get my act together and start blogging regularly.

My parents are now interested in possibly spending more for a fuller feature website. Most of our business comes from ON-ISLAND tourists, but there are lots of ways I imagine expanding our business online. I would like to maintain a simple, elegant look such as the current site has, with a basic home screen that simply has a slideshow and phone number. The design feel would be similar: browns and greens and natural, gritty look, coinciding with a sustainable botanical garden. You'll see we already have a nicely designed logo and we would like the site to match its style. However there are a number of features I'd like for the future:

1. Better blogging capabilities. Organize blog posts not just chronologically, but also based on topic (flower blooms, gardening tips, video, photos, cooking, etc.), with the ability to rearrange the organization as I go. Make integrating the blog with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc., easier.
2. Possibility for online store for our homemade chocolate sales and ability to easily add other products in the future.
3. Easily editable plant database. We have more than 400 exotic species and I would like to slowly create an online database with pictures, videos, and interesting information about each one of our collection. This also gives visitors to our gardens the ability to note the tag number of a specimen, go online after their vacation, and find the name of the plant they took a picture of...
4. Streamlined for SEO. I'm willing to do this work myself: tags, site map, etc. I'm a newbie but willing to learn. I want our new website to be relatively user friendly when it comes to the behind-the-scenes SEO work.
5. Compatibility with smartphones. This doesn't necessarily have to be part of the original design, perhaps a project we add later, but this feature should be kept in mind when designing. The entire site doesn't necessarily have to work on a smartphone, but a home page with our phone number and pictures, and a simplified plant list would be the most important to view on a phone.
6. To Summarize: probably 10 static pages or less. Two databases: Blog & Plant List/Compendium. Online shop platform, which probably won't be put to use for some time.
7. I want it to look a little more professional. I'm hesitant to call this look more "complicated," but I do think our current design is a little too simple. I think of our current WordPress site as sort of "big block Lincoln-log, do it yourself design" without a lot of nuance.


My family is serious about hiring someone for this job, however, it won't necessarily start IMMEDIATELY. We are not going to jump into anything too quickly, as we have been burned with designers in the past. From the reviews I've read of this site (PPH), failure to pay for jobs completed can be a major issue from my (the employers) side. Additionally, it looks like freelancers often underbid to get a job. We are looking for a good deal, but I know enough to know when someone is ridiculously underbidding. I am looking for someone who is patient, does NOT need this job right now, and is interested in a potentially long-term relationship. My family will pay fair rates, but is more interested in a good working relationship built on trust, where I won't feel weird contacting you after the fact for advice or changes (subject to your reasonable hourly rates, of course) and you're not concerned with simply getting this job off your plate so you can get a paycheck.

I am open to suggestions. Perhaps WordPress is the way to go? Perhaps you have another idea. Preferably, you have not just a portfolio to review, but happy REAL client references who I can contact about your work.

P.S. The pricing structure allowed me on the next page is not adequate. I am used to $, of course, not pounds. We are hoping we can get the basic design for around $1,000. This is completely negotiable.
We are open to further compensation based on sales generated. We currently charge $40 for a 3 hour tour. If people call directly from our website, we are willing to pay 15% for every tour booked: that's $6 for every tour. In the future with maximum potential volume, we could have 120 people tour our gardens per week. If only 10% of our customers come through the website, that's still potentially a $200+ check every month! This might seem unusual to most designers, but we have friends with an on-island business who had a designer who agreed to this structure and that programmer has done VERY well! Given the rural, back-country nature of Kauai, and our experience to date, the majority of customers will come from on-island. Hopefully this is an incentive for a long term relationship in which you help us now and then keep the site up-to-date so that traffic exists...