// CASE STUDY · NAMED WITH PERMISSION
A 44-year-old manufacturer, measured before and after
Beckox Plastic Fabrications have built industrial process plant in Poole since 1982 — fume scrubbers and plating lines for a client list that includes Rolls-Royce and Wessex Water. Their website was ten years old, 67 megabytes, and invisible to Google for every product they make. We rebuilt it, and measured everything: same Lighthouse, same address, days apart.
- ● Lighthouse 37 → 88
- ● 43.7 s → 2.1 s
- ● 605 words → 20,142
// SAME FIRM, SAME PHOTOGRAPHS
Their own work, finally given room
Every photograph on both versions is a real Beckox job — the old site just buried ninety-nine of them on one page. The rebuild is designed like an engineering drawing sheet, because that is the language their customers read all day.
// GOOGLE’S OWN TEST, TWICE
Same tool, same address, days apart
Most speed comparisons cheat somewhere — different tools, different days, a local server flattered against a live one. This one doesn’t: Google’s Lighthouse (v13.4.1), run against the live www.beckox.co.uk both times — the old site days before it was retired, the new site the hour it went live. Raw reports kept.
| Old (WordPress) | New (static) | Why it matters | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Performance score | 37 / 100 | 88 / 100 | Google’s overall speed grade under simulated slow-4G phone conditions — the stricter test, and the one that reflects a real visitor on a real phone. |
| Largest content painted | 43.7 s | 2.1 s | How long before the main content is actually on screen. At 43 seconds, everyone has left. |
| Time to interactive | 43.7 s | 2.1 s | When the page will actually respond to a tap. |
| Total page weight | 62,725 KiB | 366 KiB | Sixty-one megabytes was ninety-nine full-resolution photographs on one page, none of them resized for the web. |
| SEO score | 92 | 100 | |
| Best practices | 92 | 100 |
Desktop tells the same story: 55 → 90, with the main content painted in 0.4 seconds instead of 10.1. And an honest footnote: the mobile 88 is not a perfect 100 — the entrance animation costs a few points of measured speed-index, a trade we made knowingly and will keep tuning.
// COUNTED, NOT ESTIMATED
The rest of the measurements
Counted in the browser with both sites loaded back to back, the same afternoon, while the old site still existed. Once a rebuild ships, the “before” column is gone forever — measuring it first is the discipline most rebuilds skip.
| Old (WordPress) | New (static) | Why it matters | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Requests to load the homepage | 127 | 11 | Every request is a round trip. Most of the old ones were images nobody asked for. |
| Images loaded | 99 | 7 | The photographs were the site’s best asset — and its biggest problem, all loading at once on one page. |
| Images missing alt text | 71 | 0 | Alt text is what screen readers announce and image search reads. It also matters to every AI tool that reads pages. |
| HTML delivered | 86 KB | 16 KB | |
| Main headings on the page | 3 | 1 | Three H1s tells a search engine the page has three subjects — which is the same as having none. |
| Pages in the sitemap | 116 | 32 | Only 20 of the old 116 were real pages; 93 were WordPress attachment clutter, one per uploaded image, each competing with the real ones. |
| Words of content, whole site | 605 | 20,142 | Seventeen of the old site’s twenty pages had under fifty words. Three product pages — fume scrubbers, process sinks, process tanks — had none at all. |
// GOOGLE’S OWN RECORD
Ten clicks a fortnight, and every one was their own name
Search Console’s record of the old site’s final fortnight, exported before the switch. This is what “invisible” looks like in Google’s own data.
10 clicks in 14 days
Nine to the homepage — and every clicked search was “beckox” or a misspelling of it. Nobody found them who wasn’t already looking for them.
5 impressions for their products
“Plastic welding”, “process tanks”, “plastic hoppers” — one impression each. Google kept testing the site against real buyer searches, finding 605 words, and moving on.
It ranked for other firms’ names
A third of the query report was people searching for different companies. The site surfaced for rivals’ names more than for its own trade — the strangest failure mode we have measured.
The part that made it certain: the three pages for fume scrubbers, process sinks and process tanks — the products this firm has made since 1982 — contained no text whatsoever. Not thin content: none. There was nothing for Google to read, so there was nothing to rank. The rebuild’s 20,142 words exist because every one of those silences was a buyer’s question nobody was answering.
// THE RISKY PART
123 old addresses, zero left behind
Every address Google knew, collected
Search Console’s page list plus both of the old site’s sitemaps — including 93 image-attachment pages WordPress had quietly created, one per uploaded photograph, all in Google’s index.
Replayed by script before launch
Every rule tested against every address — which caught a subtle trap that would have broken all 93 attachment pages, before it could. 116 of 123 land on a real page; the WordPress leftovers answer 410 Gone on purpose.
12 of 20 real pages kept their address
The contact page, the about page, the gallery — where the old address made sense, the new site simply uses it. No redirect at all beats a perfect one.
// THE PART OTHER CASE STUDIES LEAVE OUT
What we are not claiming
The new site has been live for days. It has no ranking history, no traffic story and has not yet produced an enquiry we can point to. This page claims none of those things. The before-data is banked — ten clicks a fortnight, all brand — and Search Console will say what happened next. We will publish that comparison whatever it says.
One more thing worth knowing about how the site was written: it claims no certification, standard or accreditation of any kind, because none was verified with the firm before launch. Where we could not substantiate a capability, we removed it — including, late in the build, every mention of a material we could not confirm they fabricate. Their competitors’ websites make claims their firms may or may not hold. A site that wins an enquiry on a claim it cannot honour has not won anything.
Beckox appear here by written permission. Visit the finished site at beckox.co.uk — and if you are a process engineer who needs a fume scrubber, they are very good at those.
// GOOD QUESTIONS
Frequently asked
Can a website rebuild work for an industrial or B2B company?
This one is the answer. Beckox sell fume scrubbers and plating lines to process engineers — about as far from a consumer business as it gets. The principles are identical: the buyers search like anyone else, and the firm that actually answers their questions in print earns the enquiry. If anything B2B rewards it more, because so few industrial competitors bother.
What did the old site actually cost Beckox?
Invisibility, measured. In its final fortnight Google sent the site ten clicks — every single one someone searching the company’s own name or a misspelling of it. Searches for the products they made — “plastic welding”, “process tanks” — got five impressions between them, because the pages for those products contained almost no words for Google to read. A 44-year-old firm with Rolls-Royce on its client list was unfindable for its own trade.
Why do you keep saying what you are NOT claiming?
Because the new site went live days ago, so it has no ranking history and no traffic story yet — and any case study that claims one this early is inventing it. The before-measurements are banked and dated. Search Console will say what happened next, and this page will report it, whatever it says.
Did Beckox lose their Google standing in the switch?
Protecting it was most of the engineering. Every address Google knew — 123 of them, collected from Search Console and the old site’s own sitemaps, including 93 image-attachment pages — was replayed through the redirect rules by script before launch: 116 land on a real page and the WordPress leftovers answer 410 Gone. Twelve of the twenty real pages kept their exact address, which is better than any redirect.
The old site scored 92 for SEO. Doesn't that mean it was fine?
It is the perfect example of why single scores mislead. Lighthouse’s SEO check verifies mechanics — is there a title, is the page crawlable — not whether the content can rank. The old site passed the mechanics with 605 words across twenty pages and three product pages containing no text at all. Google’s own click data is the truer verdict: ten clicks a fortnight, all brand searches.
What does a rebuild like this cost?
A fixed, published price, agreed in writing before we start — it is on the website rebuild page rather than restated here, so there is exactly one place the number lives. The old site stays live until the new one is ready, which is also how both sites here could be measured back to back.
Will you name my business in a case study too?
Only if you say yes, and only after the work is done. Beckox appear on this page because Reg and Scott gave written permission; our first rebuild case study ran for weeks without naming the client until they agreed. Your name is yours.
Your site might be losing quietly too
The old Beckox site looked fine on a desk and was invisible in search — nobody knew until it was measured. Send us your web address and we will reply with the same tables you have just read, for your site, and a straight verdict: rebuild, fix what is there, or leave it alone. A rebuild is a fixed, published price — agreed in writing before we start.
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