Case Study: A Mailbox Builder's New Website, Live in 36 Hours
In a Nutshell
When AAA Brick Mailbox Co.'s hosting plan expired, the owner called his hosting company to get the site back up and got an aggressive sales pitch: hosting, plus a generic redesign and a bundle of services he did not ask for or need. Put off, he called Remarka instead. Remarka met with him within two hours of that call. Thirty-six hours after the owner said yes, his new website was ready: easy to use on a phone and full of photos of the gorgeous mailboxes his crew builds.
Before
- Built for a desktop screen, so on a phone the whole page shrinks and is unreadable
- All text, including prices, is inside images so search engines and screen readers can't read it
- The Photo Gallery is empty
- No record of how many people visited
36 hours later
After
- Built for the phone first so nothing needs zooming
- Prices and details are real text you can read and search
- You can tap to call or email from any page
- The gallery shows more than 75 finished mailboxes
- The owner can see how many people visit from day one
The Problem
The owner's hosting plan had expired. The hosting company had pulled the site's security certificate, so visitors were seeing browser warnings instead of the AAA Brick Mailbox website.
The owner called his hosting company to get it set back up and got a sales pitch: an AI-powered, generic redesign, which he disliked, and a bundle of services he did not ask for or need, including malware protection for a simple static website. The owner was put off by the pressure and called Remarka.
Underneath the expired plan, the site still technically worked but it had many problems that would eventually cost the business, if it had not already:
- The layout had no mobile mode, forcing visitors on their phone to see a miniature desktop site.
- The Photo Gallery page was empty, making the company's amazing masonry work conspicuously absent.
- All text on the website, including product details, descriptions, and prices, were inside images, making all the content invisible to search engines.
- As they were embedded in images, the company's phone number, email, and address could not be tapped on a phone.
- There was no visitor tracking so there was no record of how many people visited or what they looked at.
How We Worked
1. We met the same day
A non-functional site is a critical issue so Remarka met with the owner within two hours of his call.
2. We compared the old site to a new direction
At that meeting I took his old site and compared it side by side to a new design concept I quickly roughed out. Together, we went through the differences and why they were important changes to make. The conversation immediately moved from restoring the old site to rebuilding it. He agreed to a rebuild plus simple yearly hosting through Remarka. The 36-hour clock started there.
3. We designed for the phone first
The old site had no visitor tracking, so we needed to make a few assumptions, starting with how people browse and shop. For a local business selling to homeowners, the safer assumption was that most customers would arrive on a phone. Every page was designed for a phone first: tap-to-call, a working email address and simple navigation with no zooming.
4. We protected what already worked
A rebuild can throw away the search rankings an old site has already earned. The simple structure of the old site was kept, and every old page address now forwards to its new page so old links and bookmarks still work. Prices and product details became ordinary text that people, search engines and AI search tools can read.
5. We decided what could wait
Getting the new site live was the priority, so we tabled some minor details. In the week after launch we added two minor pages, did a couple of rounds of text revisions and cleaned up the photos.
The Finished Site
The Designs & Prices page lists every model with large photos, the price, and installation and customization details. It answers the predictable questions before a customer calls.
The Gallery shows more than 75 photos of finished work. Changing the brick, the stone or the top changes the finished mailbox a great deal, so customers need to see the range, not a handful of examples. Before the rebuild the owner had to share example images from his phone.
I edited distractions such as people, standing water and tools out of about 30 of the photos. The mailboxes in the photos were left exactly as the crew built them.
Immediate Impact
The new site runs Google Analytics, so for the first time we can see what his visitors actually do during site visits. Here is what the first 30 days showed.
About 80% of visitors are on a phone
The old site was hardest to use on a phone. And a phone is what most of his visitors were using to browse his website.
Visitors spend time with prices and photos
In the first 30 days after launch, the Designs & Prices page had more than 600 visits where visitors spent more than 2 minutes per visit browsing. The Gallery had nearly 450 visits averaging 3 minutes, which means the page that previously was empty now sees the most engagement on the website.
No bundle shenanigans
The owner walked away from the hard sell at his old hosting company. Instead of a bundle he never asked for, he got a site he loves and simple yearly hosting.
Familiar Story?
These are signs your website is costing you business. You can see or hear each one yourself:
- When loaded on a phone, your website is too small to read or a pain to use.
- When you Google what you sell and your town, you have to scroll past other businesses to find your website.
- Your photos of finished jobs are on your phone and not on your website.
- Your hosting company is pushing services they cannot articulate and you are not sure what they are or why you need them.
- When you visit your own website, your browser shows a warning page instead of your site.
If something about your website is bothering you, describe it to me. A 30-minute conversation is usually enough to decide what is worth doing first.