Came for a website. Now building the system behind it.

BBS Window Blinds measures, makes and fits blinds, curtains and shutters from Salford and has done since 2008. They came to us for a new website. Two months after it went live, we are building the system their office runs on.

This is a young project, so each section says what has been measured, what is live and what is still in build. BBS agreed to be named here, and the photos are BBS’s own.

What they came for

BBS sell to schools, care homes and offices on programmes of work, and to homeowners on a free home visit. The old WordPress and Elementor site mixed those buyers together, and it was slow. We tested nine of its pages on 19 August 2026, before changing anything. On a phone the main content took 13.2 seconds to appear on average, the average speed score was 57 out of 100, and none of the nine met Google’s Core Web Vitals thresholds in that lab test.

What shipped, and when

• 19 August 2026: BBS accepted our proposal.
• 14 September: the new site went live in place of WordPress. It has 155 pages, including thirteen sector pages for buyers such as schools, care homes and offices, product and project pages, and rewritten town and county pages. Commercial buyers and homeowners each get their own route in: “Start a commercial enquiry” or “Book a free home visit”.
• Rankings protected: nineteen addresses earn every Google ranking BBS had tracked, and the build refuses to publish if one goes missing. On 31 October we checked all 195 old addresses against the live site. 90 are pages, 105 redirect to the right new page and none return an error (website migration).
• 28 September: eleven guides went up.
• 14 October: the monthly search work started: local SEO and GEO, so people and AI assistants can find and recommend BBS.
• 31 October: the Manchester office blinds page was rewritten, with five Manchester office projects linking to it. We re-measure it on 28 November.
• 10 November: the office moved onto the staff system, covered below.

Photos: BBS Window Blinds, as published on their own site.

Faster on a phone

We ran the same nine-page test on the live site on 14 November 2026. The average speed score on a phone went from 57 to 100, and the main content now appears in 1.5 seconds instead of 13.2, about nine times faster. On a phone the homepage went from 15.8 MB to 0.3 MB. On a desktop the average score is 96.

What search has done since

We compare whole months: August 2026, the old site’s last full month, with October 2026, the new site’s latest full month (Google Search Console).

• Average Google position: about five places higher between August and October 2026. On mobile it is about three places higher. Read it beside two other results: impressions fell 12% over the same months, and clicks from searches that do not name BBS were flat. BBS is better placed, but we are not claiming more people are searching for blinds.
• Clicks from Google: up 18% in two months. Against October 2025, the same month a year earlier, they are up 78%.
• Impressions: down 12%, so BBS was shown a little less often and clicked a little more.
• ChatGPT, 31 October: we asked it seven questions a buyer might ask, logged out. It named BBS first on all four commercial questions, such as school blinds and care home blinds, and linked to BBS pages. It did not name BBS on the three home-buyer questions.

Enquiries

The new site brought its first commercial web enquiries in October 2026. None were recorded in September. Web-form enquiries overall are not up yet, so we are not claiming more enquiries.

This count covers web forms only. BBS takes most of its enquiries by phone and WhatsApp, and those are not counted here. For the forms, we used the website’s own server record, with tests, repeats and spam removed.

What we are building now

A website can bring an enquiry in. It cannot get the job measured, quoted, ordered and fitted. Since 13 October we have been building BBS a staff system of its own. It is being built so that enquiries, quotes and jobs sit in one place and nothing is typed in twice.

Live:

• Since 10 November 2026 the office works in it. BBS stopped using a separate CRM that day, and its history came across.
• Website enquiries reach it automatically, and the office is emailed as well.

In build, switched on one step at a time with BBS’s go-ahead:

• Surveys and quotes in the same place as the enquiry. This is being built so that the office can take on more work without another admin hire.
• A link to their accounting software, and reminders to customers before a visit. Both are built and off until BBS says go. They are meant to cut the time bookkeeping and paperwork take.

Designed, not switched on: AI help with routine paperwork. It is designed to draft, never to decide, with a person checking every draft first. No AI or bookkeeping automation is live yet. See custom software and AI agents.

We have not measured admin time saved yet, so we are not claiming a figure.

Numbers and how we counted them

• Average Google position, about five places higher. Search Console, whole months, August and October 2026. Position is the average across all searches, weighted by how often BBS was shown.
• Clicks, up 18% in two months and 78% on a year earlier. Same source. August and October 2026, and October 2025.
• Impressions, down 12%. Same source and months as clicks.
• Mobile speed score, 57 to 100. Lighthouse tests on the same nine pages, 19 August and 14 November 2026.
• Main content on a phone, 13.2 seconds to 1.5, about nine times faster. Same tests.
• Commercial web enquiries, first ones in October 2026. The website’s server record, with tests, repeats and spam removed, to 31 October 2026.
• Web-form enquiries overall, not up yet. The old site’s form export, February to August 2026, compared with the server record for October 2026. Phone and WhatsApp enquiries are not in either.

Before launch, Search Console held the old site’s history in two properties, so its clicks add the two together. Impressions and position come from the main one. Lighthouse is a lab test, not real visitors.

What these numbers do not show

• The old site was already improving. October’s clicks are 14% above the old site’s monthly average for March to August 2026, so most of the 78% rise on a year earlier came before launch.
• Searches that do not name BBS. Clicks from these were flat between August and October (to 30 October). About 3 in 10 October clicks came through the Google Business Profile link. We are not claiming growth in people searching for blinds yet.
• Enquiries. Web-form enquiries are not up on the old site’s rate, so we are not claiming more enquiries. Early November is too short to read. Phone and WhatsApp enquiries are not counted.
• ChatGPT. One answer per question, and answers vary.

What this shows a similar firm

We started with the website, the search work followed, and the same team is now building the system the office runs on. The rebuild kept the rankings BBS already had and made the site far faster on a phone. If your firm has a slow site and an office stretched thin, talk to us about where to start. You can also read about web design and SEO.