Case Study · Built From Zero
Lighthouse Legacy Strategies didn’t have a website. Not an old one, not a dated one - none at all. Launch Automation built a complete site in 24 hours: retirement, annuities, life insurance and final expense each explained in plain language, ten free planning calculators, real client reviews, and forty-one AI-readable answers - not a brochure that sits there.
The Starting Point
This is not a redesign. There was no old site to redesign - this is a case study of a build from zero. Here is what that actually meant, day to day.
There was no live, public website for Lighthouse Legacy Strategies before this build. Referrals and word of mouth carried the practice.
A prospective client had no way to check a coverage gap or a retirement income number without calling first.
Retirement income, annuities, life insurance and final expense planning weren’t explained anywhere online.
Nothing declared Sharon as a licensed agent in the hidden layer Google and AI assistants read - because nothing existed to declare it.
Real client reviews existed - nowhere brought them together for a new family to see before calling.
No mobile experience, because there was no experience to make mobile.
What We Measured
Every row on the right was measured on the live site. Every row on the left is simply what did not exist yet.
There is no archived old site because there was no old site. Every “Now, live” figure above was measured directly from the live site on 2026-09-04.
The Build
The right side is the real, live site, playing right now. Nothing on the left is a screenshot of an old website, because none existed.
this is live, right nowThe homepage. Tap any card below to open that part of the site live, full screen.
Tap a card to open it live, full screen - this is the real site, not a screenshot.
Real, In Motion
Every clip below is a real video captured straight from the live site, not a mockup. The full build carries 16 of them across every page; here are 8.
Every clip above was recorded directly from the live build on 2026-09-04 - the same 16 video files that play across the real site.
Mobile First
So the site was built for the phone first. The screen below shows the live site at phone size. The right screen is a same-day capture of the live site at phone size, scrolling through the real page.
On the live site, every action above is one tap from any section - real planning calculators that run in the browser, a phone number that dials, a text that opens pre-filled, and coverage explanations that don’t require a call to read.
What Visitors Don’t See
Anyone can see a clean website. The layer underneath - the one Google, Siri and ChatGPT actually read - is where a site built from zero either gets built right the first time, or doesn’t get built at all.
What most new practices start with - nothing
What we give every client
Building a site from zero means the layer underneath either gets built right the first time,
or it never gets built at all.
Every figure above was measured on the live site on 2026-09-04. 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.
The Scope
A full website, built around one advisor and four real product lines - not a template with new colors.
A 25-page live site, sitemap-verified, designed around Sharon’s own practice and the people she serves.
Coverage gap, retirement income, cost of waiting and more, each its own working tool.
Retirement income, annuities, life insurance and final expense, each with its own plain-language detail.
3 real reviews brought together in one place, instead of scattered or unseen.
Person & Organization schema - NPN 18170848, service states, credentials, written for machines.
Structured across 3 topics so assistants can quote it directly.
Titles, descriptions, canonicals, a sitemap and robots directives, live from day one.
A live llms.txt summary, so assistants can read the practice directly.
Built for the Actual Business
Instead of one generic homepage, the site gives each product and each audience its own place to work. Tap any of them to open the real, live page.
Each card above is a real, live page on the site - tap it to open it full screen.
Live & Verified
No made-up traffic charts. Just what is built, verified and running today.
The Build, At a Glance
No website
No planning tools
No published product details
Invisible to Google & AI
Reviews unseen by new clients
Nothing built for a phone
Live website, day one
10 free calculators, working
4 product lines, explained
Structured for Google & AI
3 reviews, featured together
Built mobile-first
The Scope
Typically, each piece is separate
Website design & development
SEO setup
Custom calculators, often billed as separate tools
Hosting
Maintenance
Every future edit, billed hourly
One relationship, everything included
A complete live website
10 planning calculators, built in
Hosting & SSL included
Unlimited edits - you text it, we ship it
Search & AI setup, kept current
Real human support by text
This build shipped in 24 hours at no build cost, with ten working planning calculators and real client reviews already in place.
How It Works
No existing site required. Tell us what you do and who you serve - that’s the whole assignment.
The site, the structured data, and any planning tools, built around what you actually do.
You see everything at a private link before anything goes live to the public.
Questions Business Owners Actually Ask
A shorter set of the questions we hear most, answered plainly - grounded in what was actually measured on this build.
For Lighthouse Legacy Strategies there was no build fee at all - $0 upfront - and the site runs $97 a month, which includes hosting and unlimited edits. Most builds have a low or no build fee and a lower monthly fee; the exact numbers depend on scope.
This site went from a first conversation to a live, working site in 24 hours - ten planning calculators, four product pages, and a full FAQ included.
That is exactly what this build was. There was no old site to redesign, so everything - structure, copy, schema, calculators - was built from a blank page in one pass.
Structured data (schema) is a hidden layer of code that tells Google and AI assistants exactly who you are. For this build that means a licensed insurance and annuity agent, with a license number, service states and credentials written as data instead of buried in paragraphs.
You give those systems something concrete to read. This site ships with a robots.txt that names 48 AI and search crawlers directly, a sitemap, and a live llms.txt summary built specifically for AI assistants to pull from.
They give a visitor a reason to stay on the page and a real number to bring into a conversation, instead of leaving to search for one elsewhere. This site has 10 of them, covering retirement income, coverage gaps and cost of waiting.
It helps enormously. This site’s FAQ page alone carries 41 structured question-and-answer pairs across three topics, giving search engines and AI assistants specific, quotable content instead of a single generic paragraph.
There were no existing rankings to protect here, since no site existed before this build. In general, a well-built new site with clean structured data and a real sitemap is far more likely to help visibility than hurt it.
A custom build like this one includes original design, custom-built calculators and tools, full structured data, a written FAQ, and hosting with unlimited edits - not a pre-made theme with a new logo dropped in.
No. We work from a short conversation about the business and build the copy, structure and design from there. Real photos or details can always be sent afterward and get folded in.
Yes. The build is done on a preview address first so everything can be reviewed privately, then pointed at your own domain when you are ready to go live.
The site keeps evolving. Edits, new pages and updates are included going forward - you send what needs to change and it gets shipped, not billed hourly.
It means every page, calculator and action works cleanly on a phone screen without pinching or horizontal scrolling - which matters because most visitors to a site like this open it on a phone first.
Lighthouse Legacy Strategies is Sharon Donovan’s independent life insurance and annuity practice, licensed in Arkansas, Missouri and Texas, covering retirement income, annuities, life insurance and final expense planning.
Real Tools, Real Use
Three of the ten planning calculators, filled in with realistic numbers and run live on the site right now - real inputs on the left, the real output they produced on the right.
A visitor enters what coverage and savings they already have. This run showed a $2,282,000 coverage gap - a real number, calculated in the browser in seconds.
Enter an age, a monthly contribution and a target income, and the tool projects the balance at retirement. This run landed on a $1,055,542 projected balance from $345,000 in real contributions.
Shows what delaying actually costs, side by side. Starting today reached $403,273; waiting five years reached $273,113 - a real $130,161 difference on the same monthly contribution.
Every figure above came directly from the live calculators on 2026-09-04, run with the sample numbers shown - not a mockup. All ten tools are live at /financial-tools.
