A family-run van hire business on Rayne Road in Braintree, trading under a name that was too long, on a WordPress site whose enquiry form didn't work and which tracked nothing. I simplified the name so it sits next to its sister company, rebuilt the site in hand-built HTML, moved everything to a new domain without losing what the old one had earned, and put the business back in control of its own domain.
The business traded as Braintree Van Hire & Sales, shortened to BVHS. It already had a well-known sister company, Braintree Van Sales, so the name confused more than it explained.
The site ran on WordPress. On mobile it scored 25 on Google PageSpeed and took 15.8 seconds to show its main content, and three in every four of its search clicks came from phones. The enquiry form didn't work, and the booking buttons went nowhere. The address on the site didn't match the one on Google.
There was no Google Analytics, no Tag Manager and no conversion tracking, so nobody could say how many people called or enquired, or where they came from.
I simplified the name to Braintree Van Hire, or BVH, so it now sits next to Braintree Van Sales as a matching sister brand. The business had no proper logo files, so I had a full logo pack made for both brands, with a plain version for the web and a round version for social, in every format they'll need.
The new name came with a new domain, braintreevanhire.co.uk. I also registered the .com and .uk versions of both brands so nobody else can. Email moved to a shared bookings mailbox the whole team can use.
This was the part that mattered most, and nobody would see it on the site.
The old domain wasn't in the business's name. It sat in a personal account belonging to someone outside the company. I found out who held it and got it transferred into the company's name, inside an account the business controls.
Every client I work with owns their own domain. It's the most valuable thing a website has, and too many small businesses only find out it isn't theirs when they want to leave.
Google PageSpeed Insights, homepage, before (28/09/2026) → after (22/10/2026):
The old homepage jumped around while it loaded. Google treats a layout shift above 0.25 as poor, and the old site was at 1.007 on mobile. The new one comes in at 0.001, so nothing moves.
I built the site to be found as well as to look good. Before writing a page, I researched the searches people actually use to find van hire in Braintree, and the site is structured around them, with pages for weekly, monthly and business hire. Every page has its own title and description written for those searches, and schema markup that tells Google what the business is, where it is and what it offers.
Prices are on the page, from £65 a day. Both phone numbers, WhatsApp and a quote form sit where someone on a phone can reach them with a thumb. The form has spam protection, and every enquirer gets an automatic reply.
Moving to a new domain is where most rebrands quietly lose their rankings. The old site had years of search history behind it, and nearly all of its clicks came from people searching the business's own name.
Every old address now redirects in a single step to its new page. The move is registered in Search Console. The Google Business Profile was renamed and rewritten for hire only, given its own services by van type and hire length, and split cleanly from the sales business, so Braintree Van Hire and Braintree Van Sales now show as two properly named listings on the map.
Google picked the new site up within days. Inside a week it had overtaken the old domain, which is now dropping out of the index, and it sits second for “van hire braintree”, behind only a national brand and ahead of long-established local competitors.
Every site I build has tracking in from day one. Tag Manager and GA4 are set up properly, with a cookie consent banner. Form enquiries, calls to each number, WhatsApp clicks and clicks through to the sales site are all tracked separately.
Google Ads was the next phase, so I set the account up at the same time. The conversion goals for the form, each phone number and calls from ads were connected to the site before the first ad ran.
The site went live on a Friday. On the Monday, its first full business day, it brought in five website enquiries, with the phone ringing on top. The old site's form didn't work, so that's five more than it could have taken.
To make sure none of them slip, the team now has a lead tracker. Every enquiry is logged with who followed it up, how fast, and whether it turned into a booking.
Five enquiries, day one
On the first full business day, from a site whose old form took none.
98/100 desktop, 81 mobile
Up from 20 and 25. Mobile load time cut from 15.8s to 5.0s, and the page no longer jumps around while it loads.
Their domain, their name
Pulled back from a third party's account into the business's own control, with matching domains secured.