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Julien Cortesi
Julien Cortesi

Posted on • Originally published at julienc.net

Revamping a Stagnant Website: A Successful Redesign Case Study

This article was originally posted to my personal blog

In 2023, I had the opportunity to accompany a client in the redesign of their website, combining web development and SEO.

Results:

  • Generated €90k+ in revenue.
  • Conversion rate increased by 10x (from 0.1% to 1%).
  • Qualified traffic increased from 600 to 7000 visits per month.

Context:

  • Sector: B2B SME (€500k-€1M/year).
  • The website suffered from performance and maintenance issues, limiting its evolution.
  • The site consists of around fifty pages, including 30 articles.
  • 20% of the pages generate traffic.
  • The client has no developers, designers, or copywriters on their team.

Marketing Actions Implemented Before My Mission:

  • Word-of-mouth
  • Attempted implementation of an SEO strategy through a blog (for 2 years) with disappointing results.

Objectives of My Mission:

  • Redesigning the outdated and technically stagnant website.
  • Improving the site's SEO.
  • Increasing the number of qualified prospects.
  • Boosting the site's conversion rate.

Technical Overhaul:

I proposed a custom development to completely redesign the site with the aim of:

  • Having a site closely tailored to the client's functional needs.
  • Completely optimized, technically smooth, and scalable.
  • Offering a consistent, pleasant, and effective user experience.

I opted for an efficient technical stack that seemed most suitable for the situation: Django, Tailwind, HTMX.

SEO & Traffic:

For SEO, we started from scratch by analyzing the traffic of direct competitors to identify pages and keywords that bring them the most traffic while being relevant to the client's activities. We also rewrote and improved some of the existing articles. I established a roadmap for creating new content to address the identified search intentions.

As soon as a new article starts to rank, we move on to testing phases to improve the title, optimize CTAs, etc. We also implemented content and lead magnets reuse on new channels (LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.).

Increase in Conversion and Generation of Qualified Leads:

  • Optimization of standard CTAs on the site (navbar, footer, sidebar) and contextualized CTAs.
  • Addition of sections and inserts presenting my client's activity and legitimacy.
  • Revision of hero sections, social proof presentations, benefits, offers, methodology, etc.
  • Integration of lead magnets created by my client (e.g., a white paper).
  • Addition of email capture modules on all pages of the site.
  • Implementation of a nurturing sequence to convert these emails into prospects.

Implementation:

Over a hundred hours were dedicated to the overhaul, SEO, content optimization, and funnel.

I loved this project as it allowed me to fully utilize my cross-functional skills, beyond pure development.

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