// CUSTOMER STORY
Fifteen years of IT — and a website to match the workmanship
Colin Clark Builders is a heritage builder in East Dorset, established in 1978 — cob and lime, green oak framing and listed-building restoration. We have looked after their technology for over 15 years: first their laptops, then their hardware refresh cycle, then their hosting and email, and in 2026 a complete rebuild of their website. Published with their permission.
- ● 15+ years as their IT team
- ● Dell Latitude business laptops
- ● Website, email & hosting
// THE LONG VERSION, DATED
How one broken laptop became fifteen years of everything
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Over 15 years ago
It started with a broken laptop
A repair, done properly, at a fair price. No contract, no pitch. Trust is built in jobs that small.
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The years between
From fixing their laptops to running their IT
Dell Latitude business laptops on a planned refresh cycle — supplied, set up and supported by the same people who answer the phone when something breaks.
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2022
Website and email brought in-house
Their existing site and email moved onto hosting we manage — keeping everything, changing who answers when it goes wrong. One team, one number.
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30 July 2026
The rebuild went live
A complete rebuild of colinclarkbuilders.co.uk — 79 pages that finally explain the craft, measured against the old site on its last day. The full engineering story, with every number, is the measured case study.
- Server response 1,320 → 106 ms
- 20 → 79 pages
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Now
Being measured in the open
The day after launch we scored the new site with our own free website checker and published the result — including what it flagged for improvement.
- Lighthouse 99 desktop · 90 mobile
- SEO 100
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August 2026 – January 2027 · Reserved
The results, when they are real
Search Console re-measures at 30, 90 and 180 days, published on the measured case study whatever they say. No projections in the meantime.
- Awaiting Search Console data
// THE LONG VERSION
It started with a broken laptop
Most IT relationships begin with something not working. This one did too — and then simply never ended. Fifteen years on we look after everything with a plug or a password on it, and the trust built over that time is why they asked us to rebuild the website too.
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01
Repairs, first
We started where most good relationships start — fixing what they already had. Repairing and reviving the firm’s existing laptops rather than selling them replacements they did not yet need.
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02
Supply & a proper refresh cycle
As machines genuinely wore out we advised on and supplied replacements — Dell Latitude business laptops, chosen for durability and long parts support rather than headline price. Hardware is now replaced on a planned cycle, before it fails, rather than in a panic afterwards.
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03
Hosting & email taken over (2022)
We took on hosting for their WordPress website and their business email — the two things a building firm genuinely cannot afford to lose. One provider, one number to ring, and no arguing between suppliers about whose fault it is.
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04
Website redesign (2025)
A redesign of the existing WordPress site, bringing the look up to date and presenting the firm’s work properly.
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05
Full rebuild & optimisation (2026)
A ground-up rebuild on modern static architecture — faster, far harder to hack, no plugin maintenance — with the search and structured-data work the old site never had. Details below.
// THE 2026 REBUILD
What we actually built
The firm does genuinely specialist work — cob, lime, green oak, listed buildings — and almost none of it was explained anywhere a customer or a search engine could find it. That was the real problem to solve, and it was a content problem as much as a technical one.
A site that explains the craft
Eighty pages covering the services, the materials, the towns they work in and the questions homeowners actually ask — cob repair, lime versus cement, listed-building consent, VAT relief. Written to be genuinely useful, not padded for word count.
Built to be found by AI too
A full structured-data entity graph, an
llms.txtand answer-first content, so assistants like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity can read and cite the business correctly — not just Google.Fast, and hard to break
Static pages, responsive images generated at build time in WebP and JPEG, no database and no plugins. Nothing to patch on a Sunday night, and nothing for a bot to log into.
Their search history protected
The riskiest moment in any rebuild is launch day. We mapped every old address to a new one using their own Search Console data and a crawl of the old site — and kept twelve of the seventeen pages with search history on their exact original address, so Google had nothing to relearn.
Only real photographs
We replaced stock library images with photographs of the firm’s own work, captioned with the real places. A heritage builder’s portfolio has to be theirs — the whole proposition falls apart otherwise.
Enquiries that reach a human
The contact form posts to their own mailbox with the details that matter for quoting — location, and whether the property is listed — so the first reply can be useful instead of another round of questions.
// BEFORE AND AFTER
The same business, photographed the same day
Both versions captured on 30 July 2026 — the old site’s last day. The new one leads with their own photographs of their own work, because for a heritage builder the portfolio is the proposition.
Most of their visitors arrive on a phone, which is where the old site struggled most. The measured before-and-after figures are on the rebuild case study.
// ONE EXAMPLE
Seen thousands of times. Clicked almost never.
Their timber framing page was already appearing near the top of Google thousands of times a quarter — and almost nobody was clicking it. That is not a ranking problem, it is a wording problem: the title and description gave a searcher no reason to choose it. We found it by reading their Search Console data rather than guessing, and rewrote the page around what those searchers were actually after. It is the sort of thing that stays invisible unless somebody goes looking.
// THE POINT
One team, fifteen years, everything joined up
When the same people supply the laptops, host the email, run the website and answer the phone, nothing falls down the gap between suppliers. We already knew the business, the people and the work before a single page was written — which is why the site sounds like them rather than like a template. That is the case for a long relationship, and it is the one we would make to any Dorset business still juggling four different providers.
// GOOD QUESTIONS
Frequently asked
How long have you worked with Colin Clark Builders?
Over 15 years. It started with repairing their existing laptops and grew into supplying and supporting their whole IT setup, then their website and email hosting, and most recently a complete website rebuild.
Do you only do websites, or IT as well?
Both, and that is rather the point of this story. We supply and support the hardware, host the email and the website, and build the site itself — so there is one number to ring whatever has gone wrong. See monthly IT support and web design & hosting.
Why Dell Latitude laptops for a building firm?
Latitudes are Dell’s business range — sturdier than the consumer models, with longer parts availability and next-business-day warranty options. For a firm working out of vans, sites and a home office, that durability matters more than shaving a few pounds off the purchase price.
Can you take over an existing website and email?
Yes — that is exactly what we did here in 2022, moving both onto hosting we manage. You keep your domain and your addresses; we take on the updates, backups, security and the awkward jobs. That service is now packaged as 365 Web Care.
Do you rebuild WordPress sites or replace them?
It depends on what the site needs to do. Colin’s stayed on WordPress for the 2025 redesign. For the 2026 refresh we rebuilt it as a fast static site, because for a business site of this kind it is quicker, far harder to hack and needs no plugin maintenance. We measured both versions the day before the switch — see the before-and-after numbers. far harder to hack and needs no plugin maintenance. We will always tell you which we think is right, and why.
Want your IT and your website looked after by the same team?
Hardware, hosting, email and a website that actually brings work in — from one Dorset team who answer the phone. Tell us what you have got and we will tell you honestly what is worth changing.
01202 775566 · help@365techies.co.uk · MON–FRI 9AM–5PM