Haley & Aldrich Website Delivers Exceptional Performance Improvements
Environmental and geotechnical engineering firm achieves a dramatic increase in performance following a content-rich website redesign.
Overview
In today’s highly competitive digital marketplace, a company’s brand assets need to carefully balance user-friendly experiences and technical performance. When environmental and geotechnical engineering consulting firm Haley & Aldrich needed a website overhaul, they came to Walker Sands for a modern, content-rich site.
In addition to building a site that generates more leads through a thoughtful user experience, optimized content and SEO best practices, Walker Sands significantly improved the site’s technical performance — quickly increasing Haley & Aldrich’s Google Lighthouse score from a “C” to an “A.”
overall Google Lighthouse score
SEO Google Lighthouse score
decrease in bounce rate
The Challenge
When Haley & Aldrich approached Walker Sands, they knew they needed more than a simple site refresh — they needed their website to better engage key audiences, drive more leads and accurately represent the breadth and depth of their services. After meeting with Haley & Aldrich’s C-suite and marketing team to determine the best course of action, our team recognized a full web redesign would ramp up the site’s technical performance and speed, increase traffic, improve SEO and drive higher conversions.
Additionally, the website redesign required a high volume and cadence of content — relying on input from 85 SMEs at Haley & Aldrich to accurately capture the nuances and specialization of their markets and services. And client education on information architecture, SEO and content best practices was imperative for the success of the project.
The Solution
To accomplish Haley & Aldrich’s aggressive goals, Walker Sands developed a strategy that involved several priorities:
Conduct research and interviews
Walker Sands created and distributed a survey to 85 SMEs to capture granular messaging for specific web pages and conducted 70+ follow-up interviews. From there, our team produced more than 80 pages of site content, sourced more than 250 images and parsed through ~1,000 individual URLs to ensure accurate redirects.
Develop highly targeted keyword strategy
To support Haley & Aldrich’s nuanced expertise in specific market and service areas, Walker Sands created an in-depth keyword strategy, identifying organic opportunities that closely aligned to page topics. By talking through SEO best practices, keyword rationale and ongoing optimizations, Walker Sands enabled Haley & Aldrich to rank for high-value keywords both at launch and in the months post-launch.
Focus on human connection
Haley & Aldrich wanted to avoid overly consultative language, instead focusing on connecting to their readers and directly addressing their needs through content. The new site content was created to clearly present the depth and breadth of their offerings, capabilities and services, while also identifying the messaging, voice and tone that was representative of Haley & Aldrich’s culture.
The Results
Following the launch of its new website, Haley & Aldrich saw immediate improvements in several key areas, including:
- A dramatic increase in technical performance based on Google Lighthouse scores. The redesign cut load time in half and raised all other scores to an “A” grade.
- +13.32% in sessions
- -65.28% in bounce rate
- Overnight improvement in search rankings
A website redesign is a huge undertaking for any brand, but Haley & Aldrich’s partnership with Walker Sands was a great success. The redesigned website enabled the firm to achieve its goals and equipped the brand with a digital asset that tracks more closely to its position as a market leader.
