Case: Renewing an Eight-Year-Old Corporate Website

Act 1: Diagnosis — What Did the Eight-Year-Old Site Say?

The project began not with design but with measurement: the current site’s audit photograph was taken — a step that, notably, requires no site visit and works identically for an owner abroad.

Speed: eight seconds on a phone

The homepage managed on desktop and opened in eight seconds on a phone — while two-thirds of visits came from phones. The audit’s first sentence was blunt: a significant share of visitors leaves without ever seeing the page.

Mobile: a shrunken desktop

The site looked mobile-friendly; in truth it was the desktop shrunk: text demanding a magnifier, menus pressed by accident, tables spilling off-screen. The gap between the mobile-friendly label and the mobile experience was the case’s first lesson.

Content: frozen in 2018

Product pages described the old catalogue, references ended eight years back; the last “news” predated the pandemic. Frozen content sends a visitor one message: no life here. That is what buyers read — and what a foreign buyer reads doubly, having no other window into the firm.

Measurement: never installed

The most critical finding: in eight years, how many visitors came, from where, doing what — no data existed. The firm did not know whether the site worked; and not knowing, it had postponed the renewal decision for years. Unmeasurement is indecision’s mother.

Act 2: The Decision — Repair or Renew?

With the audit on the table, the classic question was asked: can this site be repaired? The table condenses the debate.

The old foundation’s truth was spoken

The eight-year infrastructure could not carry current speed and security targets: repair meant new bodywork on an old engine. The decision principle was sharp: buy the foundation, not the look.

A phase plan aligned the budget

The full renewal split into two phases: the core corporate site plus measurement in phase one; the deepened product catalogue and the English version in phase two. The budget objection was solved not by shrinking scope but by spreading it over time — the same move that lets a market entrant fund phase two from year-one results.

Content ownership was assigned upfront

Against the classic of calendar accidents, the precaution came first: technical knowledge from the firm on dated deliveries, the crafting into copy from the agency. That single decision saved the calendar twice in the following weeks — and it is the exact division a foreign owner needs, with the Turkish writing squarely in the agency’s lane.

The success measure was written

The project goal was defined not in ornate words but three numbers: under three seconds on a phone, month-over-month enquiry growth, and the sentence “we reviewed your website” heard in sales meetings. A project with written goals is a project testable at the end.

Act 3: The Process — What Happened in Eight Weeks?

The project finished its planned eight weeks with a one-week slip; that week’s story teaches too.

Weeks one-two: discovery and wireframe

The audience sharpened: purchasing engineers and technical managers. That clarity shaped the site from the start: technical proof instead of ornate corporate talk, certificate visibility, product specification tables. A site that knows whom it addresses knows what to put first.

Three-five: design rounds and parallel content

Design was approved in two rounds; the single-decider order worked. Content ran parallel: the firm delivered raw knowledge on dated handovers, the copy was crafted into screen language. The slipped week came from here: one product group’s information arrived late; the written calendar made the delay visible, and that group’s pages moved to phase two. The plan turned a crisis into a decision.

Six-seven: development and measurement installation

The speed target was tested at every development step; the measurement infrastructure was installed before launch: enquiry source tracking, phone-tap counting, page performance monitoring. Measurement was laid at the foundation stage, not added as decoration — the layer that would later give the owner a monthly window into the market.

Eight: testing, handover, launch

The delivery list was tested item by item: speed measurements, mobile tests, form trials, credential handover, panel training. On launch morning the old addresses were redirected one by one to the new pages; eight years of search visibility was not binned — it moved house.

Intermission: The Three Mistakes Avoided

The case’s invisible side is what was not done: three classic mistakes were dodged deliberately.

No move without redirects

The most common renewal accident is leaving the old addresses hanging: years of search accumulation zeroed overnight. In the case plan, the redirect list was ready before the design was. A move is completed not by the removal van but by the change-of-address notice — and for a firm whose Turkish visibility is its market lifeline, this is the single most protective line in the plan.

The “everything on the homepage” trap was refused

Eight years of accumulated wishes wanted to pile onto the homepage: every department demanded its own showcase. The principle held: the homepage directs, the inner pages tell. A crowded showcase is a showcase that sells nothing.

Launch was not chained to “when everything is done”

Perfectionism is the launch date’s classic killer: one more page, one more image, and months pass. The core-and-shell plan worked: what was ready went live, the rest followed. A good site in production beats a perfect site in draft.

Act 4: The Results — What Did the Numbers Say?

The visual gathers the three-month report card; the reading follows below.

The speed target held; the return accelerated

Phone loading fell under three seconds; the bounce rate visibly dropped. The simplest reading was the truest: a visitor able to see the page can stay on the page.

Enquiries turned from accident into flow

The monthly trickle settled into a steady weekly flow; source tracking also revealed which pages produced enquiries. Phase two’s priorities were chosen with this data, not with guesses.

The field felt the site

A new sentence entered the sales team’s reports: “we reviewed your website — let’s discuss this product.” Meetings began with better-prepared buyers; what the site sold was meeting quality.

The case’s portable lessons

Four lessons travel into any project — and cross any border: start with measurement (no decision without diagnosis), buy the foundation (not the bodywork), write content ownership down (the calendar’s insurance), lay measurement at the foundation (the report-card culture — and the remote owner’s eyes). For your own diagnosis a digital audit is the first step; the process map sits in the process guide, the decision scales in the timing guide, our order on the web design page.

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