Case Study · Website Transformation
A complete digital transformation for Halstead Insurance Agency. We took the agency’s existing website and rebuilt the entire experience from the ground up - without changing what makes Halstead a family agency Massachusetts has trusted since 1966.
Before a pixel changed, we went through the old site page by page. Six things stood between the agency and the families searching for it.
Generic stock photography and a template look that could belong to any agency, anywhere - nothing said “family-owned since 1966.”
17 of 25 pages had no H1 heading at all, and the homepage had four competing ones - Google had to guess what each page was actually about.
One form existed on the entire site - and it wasn’t on the quote page or the contact page. A visitor who wasn’t ready to call simply left.
153 images sitewide, only 4 with a description search engines or screen readers can read - the carrier logos and staff photos were invisible to Google.
Not one of the 25 pages told Google it was an insurance agency - no address, no hours, no service area, in the format machines read.
The site’s own robots.txt file tells GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended not to crawl it at all - Halstead opted itself out of AI search.
We saved a copy of the old site and audited it - and we’ll tell you what it did right, too. Here is the honest scorecard, old versus new, across all pages of both sites.
Every figure above was counted on saved copies of both sites, captured the same day. The old site’s HTML weight was already reasonably lean and its canonical URLs were correctly self-referencing - the table gives credit where it’s due.
The right side is the real redesign, loaded live right now. The left side is a same-day capture of the old site - its own security settings block it from being embedded, so this is the honest way to show it. Judge the transformation yourself.
The homepage. Every page got the same treatment - tap any page below to compare it full screen.
Tap a page to open the full-screen comparison - the redesign live, video and all, drag to reveal.
So the redesign was built for the phone first. The left screen is a same-day capture of the old site at iPhone size. The right screen is the new site itself, loaded live at phone size.
On the new site, calling either office and starting a quote are one tap from any page.
Anyone can make a website prettier. The layer underneath - the one Google, Siri and ChatGPT actually read - is where this redesign does its quietest work.
What most businesses have and never know it
What we give every client
We didn’t just redesign what people see.
We rebuilt what Google and AI systems see too.
Every figure above was counted on saved copies of both sites, captured the same day. We don’t promise rankings - nobody honestly can. We build sites that search engines and AI assistants can actually read, which is what rankings are built on.
Here is what was actually delivered inside the 24 hours.
All 18 pages designed around the Halstead brand - not a template with new colors.
Layouts tuned separately for small screens, where first impressions are usually made.
Real quote and contact forms - the old site had one form, and it wasn’t on either page.
159 of 171 images now carry alt text search engines and screen readers can use.
25 sprawling URLs - including a page for a closed office - consolidated into 18 clean pages, with every old link 301-redirected.
Unique titles, descriptions, headings, canonicals, sitemap and robots directives on every page.
Business type, both office addresses and hours written in the format Google reads.
Coverage, carriers and hours structured with FAQ schema and a real llms.txt file so assistants can quote them.
Instead of one generic “insurance” page, the new site gives each coverage line its own place to sell itself. Tap any of them to compare that page, before and after.
Each card above is a real page on the new site, with its own content and its own path to a quote.
No made-up traffic charts. Just what is finished, checked and waiting for the go-ahead.
Dated template look
No way to request a quote online
Almost no images described for screen readers or search
Duplicate page titles and descriptions
Blocked from AI search crawlers
Coverage lines buried in menus
Designed around the agency’s 60-year story
Quote forms and lead capture on every page
Photography described throughout
Every page’s title and description unique
Open to AI search, with an llms.txt
Every coverage line its own clear page
Published industry pricing puts an independent agency’s website build like this at $5,000 to $15,000, on timelines from 8 weeks up to several months - and that’s before hosting, SEO setup and every future edit are billed on top.
Each line, typically billed separately
Design
Development
SEO setup
Copywriting
Hosting
Maintenance
Every future edit
One build fee, one monthly price - all of it included
Complete redesign, delivered in 24 hours
Hosting & SSL included
Unlimited edits - you text it, we ship it
Photography described for search & accessibility
Search & AI setup, kept current
Maintenance & monitoring
Real human support by text
This build carried no build fee. Pricing varies by project scope; this reflects the terms agreed for this agency.
Send the link to the site you have today. That’s the whole assignment.
Design, coverage pages, lead capture and the full search & AI setup - typically inside 24 hours.
You review your new site at a private link - exactly like this page - before it ever replaces your current one.
Send us the website you have today. We’ll show you what it could become.
