Brought in for SEO, stayed for everything

When Dream Team Movers first came to us, they weren’t looking for a new website. They wanted help with SEO. They were a three-person operation with a single vehicle, working out of St Albans, and they knew they needed to be more visible online. The brief was straightforward: help us get found on Google.

But the site itself was a problem. It was dated and messy. The copy was full of poor grammar and terrible repetition, clearly written around a vague understanding of SEO rather than for actual human readers. Pages repeated the same phrases over and over, the structure was confusing, and there was no clear sense of what made Dream Team different from any other man-and-van service.

We started with what we could — the SEO work, the copy, the content strategy. And when that started producing results, when the phone started ringing more and the business began to grow, they came back to us with a bigger ask: redesign the whole site. They’d seen what we could do with the content. Now they wanted the design to match.

We were hired to do SEO. But as the results came in and the business grew, the scope grew with it. Dream Team didn’t just need better search rankings — they needed a website that matched the quality of the service they were delivering on the ground. That trust was earned, not assumed.

WHAT WE DELIVERED

What started as SEO became a complete transformation

The engagement started as an SEO brief and grew organically as the results proved themselves. Once Dream Team saw the impact of better content and local targeting, they trusted us with the full redesign — and from there, with their ad campaigns and ongoing growth strategy.

THE TRANSFORMATION

Then and now

OUR APPROACH

SEO first, then the full rebuild

The first job was the copy. Every page on the site needed rewriting — not tweaking, not editing, but starting again from scratch. The existing content was clearly written with SEO in mind but without any understanding of how modern search engines actually work. Repeating “St Albans removals” fourteen times on a page doesn’t help you rank — it makes you look desperate. We replaced it all with clean, professional copy that spoke to real customers and naturally incorporated the terms people actually search for.

Next, we expanded the service offering. Dream Team had skills and capabilities they weren’t showcasing. We created dedicated pages for services like piano removals, grandfather clock and longcase clock removals, furniture assembly, packing and unpacking services, and handyman services. Each page was written to rank for its own set of search terms, effectively multiplying the number of ways potential customers could find Dream Team online.

We also significantly improved their local area targeting. The original site was vaguely aimed at “St Albans” with little else. We built out dedicated location pages covering the towns and areas Dream Team actually serves — Watford, Harpenden, Hemel Hempstead, Radlett, Borehamwood, Luton, Dunstable, and into London.

As the SEO work took hold and enquiries increased, Dream Team came back to us for the full website redesign. The content was performing, but the site itself still looked dated and didn’t reflect the professional operation the business was becoming. We redesigned the entire site — improving the brand presence, modernising the layout, and building a platform that matched the quality of the service. It was a natural next step: the SEO proved we understood their business, and the redesign cemented the partnership.

Finally, we launched their first paid advertising campaign to complement the organic work and accelerate the flow of new enquiries.

THE JOURNEY

From local man-and-van to recognised brand

PHASE 1

SEO and copy rewrite

We were brought in to do SEO. The first step was stripping out the repetitive, keyword-stuffed content and rewriting every page with clean, professional copy. We built new service pages and local area landing pages to broaden their search footprint. The site started ranking and the enquiries started growing.

PHASE 2

Results earn the redesign brief

As the business grew on the back of the SEO work, Dream Team came back with a bigger ask: redesign the whole website. The content was performing, but the site still looked dated. We rebuilt it from the ground up — improving the brand presence, modernising the design, and creating a site that matched the professional operation the business had become.

PHASE 3

Ad campaigns and expansion

With a strong site and organic presence in place, we launched Dream Team’s first paid ad campaign to accelerate growth further. New service pages for handyman services, piano removals, and grandfather clock removals continued to broaden the range of search terms driving traffic.

GROWTH

The business scaled

With more leads coming in consistently, Dream Team grew. They hired more staff, added support roles, expanded their fleet from one van to multiple vehicles, and broadened their service area. The three-person start-up became a fully-fledged operation.

RECOGNITION

Awards, accreditations, and national TV

Dream Team were rated one of the top three removals companies in St Albans three years running. They became accredited members of Move Assured, and were featured on BBC One. The small local outfit had become a recognised brand.

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Scarlett Olivia Salon is a local hairdressing salon that provides a modern, relaxing space to be pampered. When we were approached by Scarlett Olivia, they wanted us to produce a modern website that fits their salon’s aesthetic.

Brief

Scarlett Olivia wanted us to produce a modern website that fits their salon’s aesthetic. They provided a lot of information, including what their salon would look like and the chosen fonts and colours that the shop would be branded.

The desire to use a specific font initially worried me due to the limited number of web fonts that are usually available, but we did find a solution (see below). And the chosen colour paint also held some problems.

Solution

When working on the website design, we started with the chosen fonts and colours and started to piece it all together. We used their mood board of websites they liked and tried to distil the pieces they liked into something that would fit together.

The first issue was the colours; as most web developers & designers know, colours can appear wildly different depending on your viewing device. Though most Macs tend to come with some colour calibration, PC gamma can be a lot different. Also, if you turn up the brightness on the screen, the colours can shift and look brighter.

Even though Scarlett Olivia supplied the paint colour and RGB hex code for the colour, they weren’t happy with how light it looked on the screen. We had a few discussions back and forth about sticking with the colour or making it arbitrarily darker, but in the end, they decided not to try and match it to the location’s grey colour and instead go for black to allow the yellow/gold type to really pop and add contrast.

The Problem With Type

When Scarlett Olivia came to us, they had already designed the shop, and it was almost complete. They had a very specific font that they wanted to use. Initially, I was slightly concerned because online typefaces can cause issues.

If the font isn’t widely available and doesn’t exist on the end user’s machine, it can fall back to a second or third font. In CSS, this shows as font families.

font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif;

In the above example, you tell the user’s browser to use ‘Times New Roman’, but if they don’t have that, then use ‘Times’; if they don’t have that, use a generic ‘serif’ font. it’s a way to have the font you want first, then define the fonts you will accept if the user’s machine lacks the fonts you want them to see.

The problem with more obscure fonts is they are less and less likely to be available.

Luckily Adobe fonts had recently been updated to allow use on websites with an adobe license. So instead of matching the nearest font, we could license the actual font on the website. So the client was happy, and we didn’t have to compromise on the design.

Conclusion

This was a fun project, and it was nice to work on a darker, modern aesthetic. We look forward to working with Scarlett Olivia in the future.

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Sunflower House Nursery is a children’s nursery based in Hillingdon, West London, with locations in Hayes, Uxbridge, and Cowley.

We designed their first website and got a chance to have another go when their first site got lost somewhere on the internet (we didn’t host it then). So to ensure that never happened again, we took over hosting and management to ensure everything would be smooth sailing.

When we designed the first site, we had a chance to create some 3D graphics, and I wanted to save some of the graphics for the new website.

Brief

When we discussed the website and the design, we spoke about the ethos of Sunflower house and what they wanted to convey. I had the image of a child sitting on their parent’s lap while the parent is looking at the website, and I wanted it to be engaging for both the parent and the child.

Bright and colourful, full of wonder and joy, but with a clear message about the nursery’s ethos.

We also spoke about what other websites they liked and didn’t like before we presented them with our design. There were minor tweaks to make before we went live.

Solution

We used photos that showed some of the play and fun the children would enjoy and some of the drawing elements we created to show a childlike and fun side to the site. Including our 3D designs of stylised trees and grass that we influenced by the children’s TV my nephew was watching at the time.

There was a choice to go big and bold and bright and colourful. We wanted the website to be friendly and approachable. As I mentioned before, I wanted the child to enjoy looking at the website while the parent was busy looking through it. That was the cornerstone of the website design.

Conclusion

As creatives and illustrators, we love to work on anything that lets us explore our creative side. The first website we created for Sunflower House Nursery allowed us to use 3D imagery to create an aesthetic that both kids and adults would enjoy, and we got to push and refine that on this website.

Small visual embellishments, such as the hand-drawn background to some sections, added playful quality we wanted to get across from their motto – “Together we play, learn and develop.”

It was a joy to work on this project, and we look forward to working with them again in the future.

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tar Locksmiths is a local locksmith based in Hillingdon, Greater London, specialising in residential and automobile locksmithing. When they first approached us, they needed a new website up and running fairly quickly. We also discussed online marketing, SEO, and whether a new logo was needed.

Ultimately, we took on the website, online marketing, and logo design.

Brief

Our brief was to build a professional local locksmith website within a tight timeframe, design a logo, and begin improving their online visibility.

The client already had a domain and hosting in place, so we were able to start work on the website and logo in tandem. Part of the brief was to incorporate their existing star icon into both the branding and the website design. We were also asked to set up Google My Business map listings and, once the website was complete, potentially an Instagram page.

Solution

Working on the website and logo simultaneously proved to be a smart approach — it meant we could test how the logo designs looked on the website, which is where they’d be seen most. It also gave us the flexibility to swap logos in and out once we’d landed on a website design the client was happy with, so we could see how everything worked together in situ.

The finished website is clean and modern, with a friendly, approachable feel balanced by an air of trust and reliability. The online marketing side of the project is ongoing, and we’ll update this case study as that progresses.

Conclusion

This was an enjoyable project. The tight turnaround meant planning and time management were key — we aimed to get the website design right first time, and largely we did, with only minor revisions needed. The logo design went well too; we had two creatives develop concepts and work with the client to land on a final direction they were happy with.

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We recently had the chance to work with PlusUK Logistics on all of their digital and offline marketing, including their website, business cards and printed marketing, logo design, and consultancy on branding and even their name.

Brief

As we were brought in at the early stages concerning website and SEO potential, we looked at what worked for competitors in the logistics market. We were asked to think about the name of the company and how it would fit into the current group of business services provided by the parent company.

The timeframe was quite short for the website to be up and running, and we had to complete the naming, branding and logo.

Solution

We started with the name and decided logistics should be in the URL for a few reasons but didn’t want the domain to be too long.

Due to the timeframe that the website and marketing material had to launch, we were working on the website alongside branding and logo development.

Plus UK Logistics is self-contained but also part of the Pluscrates national network. We wanted the name to reflect an affiliation while maintaining its independence.

The Pluscrates brand, for me, has always been about premium service. That is how it was pitched on day one – they wanted to get back to a premium service in the crate hire industry. So to me, the ‘Plus’ meant more, or extra, or above and beyond. And if we break ‘Pluscrates’ into ‘Plus’ and ‘Crates’, it made more sense to keep the ‘Plus’.

While discussing the brand requirements, Neil (Director) mentioned he liked brands that don’t have to mention what they do in the logo – e.g. Argos, Sainsbury’s, John Lewis, and so forth. Plus UK seemed like a good choice.

Plus UK was the logo that we developed. We used design axioms that appear in logistics logos to give a new company in the market familiarity. We used an arrow to show movement, and we incorporated the plus icon in the nagative space between the K and arrow.

The negative space between the K and the arrow was spaced so that it would make a square/diamond, and for me, that was a reference to the boxes they would be moving around and the crates of the parent company. And within that box, the plus shows that they go above and beyond in their service.

In the smallest version of their logo used on the website’s ico (bookmark icon in the menu bar), you can see the + and the arrow.

At one point, we used the same shape as the backward K for the arrow. So it is a + and a K or one part of each of the parts of their logo. So even in the logo mark, is still PlusUK

Conclusion

This was a fun and rewarding project – the logo and branding will initially be used on their website and printed materials and later emblazoned on large commercial vehicles. The project manager for the logistics company was Stuart, and everyone was so taken with the logo they couldn’t wait to get it on the side of a lorry.

The fact that Pluscrates has a fleet of vehicles and national depots puts them in a unique position to transition into logistics and delivery.

Plus UK had tremendous growth and success, so we correctly conveyed trust and familiarity with the brand. As much of the team will admit, they grew a little too fast and had a few issues along the way. But the marketing and outreach were all very successful.

We had a lot of creative freedom on this project and could present our creative ideas.

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Ruislip Lido Website

We helped work on the new Ruislip Lido website to help promote the fantastic Lido in Ruislip.

We started by taking a day trip to the Lido and taking some pictures of the area to get an idea of what Ruislip Lido has to offer.

We wanted to make a simple, elegant, easy to use website, showing off the best bits of the Lido.

We created a custom icon set including a pirate ship play area icon, woodland walks icon and a train icon.

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ShredPlus – Secure Shredding Website Project

ShredPlus is a secure shredding and confidential waste destruction service provider.

We were asked to design and deploy a website and create a new logo for the brand.

One of the critical points requested was a custom graphic of the secure shredding bins with a relative size compared to a person and various sizes of relevant and recognisable items to many offices, such as paper ream boxes.

 

The Logo

We designed the ‘S’ of the logo to look like folded paper and two shredding blades to signify paper shredding being the company’s focus. We made a few versions before settling on this one.

The ‘Plus’ in the logo is bolded, showing the importance of service above and beyond other companies and harking back to the parent company.

 

Consultancy, Brand and Identity

We were asked to brainstorm ideas for names when we first started this project. Working closely with our contact, we would talk about the pros and cons of different names and domain names.

Our thinking is always that shorter is better, and memorable is fantastic.

We thought that having shred or shredding in the domain would give instant recognition to what the company does while adding the ‘Plus’ of the parent company so a familial link.

We began looking into PlusShred and ShredPlus, but the preference went to ShredPlus because there would be no confusion for people that heard the name and typing in the URL how many S’s should be in the middle 😉

 

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