Lead Product Designer (IC) · The AA · 2025

SEO Optimisation & Storefront Redesign

Led a full redesign of the storefront and content system to remove SEO and performance roadblocks. Pages became faster, easier to find, and simpler to maintain.

Summary

Problem

Storefront and content pages had built up years of SEO and performance debt — slow load times, inconsistent markup, poor indexation, and brittle CMS patterns. Publishing new pages was slow, risky, and prone to regression.

Solution

Led a full storefront and content redesign with SEO, performance, and accessibility treated as first-class design constraints. Delivered a modular, CMS-ready system with semantic structure, performance budgets, and SEO rules enforced by default.

Impact

Lighthouse score improved from 83 to 95, indexed pages increased by ~10%, organic traffic rose ~15% within three months. A tested component drove +2.69% step conversion, and content publishing is now faster and far less error-prone, letting teams ship confidently at scale.

Before desktop and mobile Breakdown Cover landing page, showing SEO metrics. After redesign, improved Lighthouse score, metadata and structure.
New storefront pages improved SEO, site speed, and maintainability across all sections with a Lighthouse score of 95%.
Before and After mobile and desktop side by side for non-promo period. Expand image
The new redesigned landing page for non-promo period focused on findability, speed - with a clearer on-point CTA copy, kept existing members CTA as that helps existing customers to find, created a space for compliance copy, and prioritised key words that people search on engines while looking for breakdown cover, as well as applying the new brand changes on colours and typography
Before and After mobile and desktop side by side for promo period. Expand image
New redesigned promo period landing page has all the features from non-promo periods, the clear and prioritised promotional message that was already performing well, plus the search key-words customers are trying to find in searches endorsed by the social proof of TrustPilot

Business Context

  • Business goal: Increase organic traffic by improving indexation and search visibility across high-traffic storefront pages.
  • Metrics: Indexed pages, Lighthouse and Core Web Vitals, page speed, organic traffic, and conversion step rates.
  • Constraints: Legacy CMS, inherited templates with significant SEO debt, limited development capacity, and ongoing promotional and compliance requirements.

The Core Problem

  • Existing pages were slow, inconsistent, and hard to scale without breaking SEO or performance.
  • Designers and CMS editors had too much freedom and too little guidance, leading to fragile pages and repeated regressions.
  • The challenge was to create pages that were fast, accessible, SEO-safe and reusable — without slowing delivery or increasing risk.

Strategy & Approach

  • Audited high-traffic storefront pages to identify structural SEO and performance issues.
  • Defined clear SEO and performance guardrails (not just targets) in collaboration with devs.
  • Designed a modular page system that worked with the existing CMS rather than against it.
  • Worked in close partnership with engineering through build, QA and release, with design accountable for performance and SEO outcomes — not just visual sign-off.
  • Signed off live pages and monitored post-launch performance to validate impact.

Key Design Decisions

The decisions below focus on removing SEO risk at scale, improving performance where it materially affected users, and enabling teams to ship confidently without repeated rework.

Decision #1: Build a modular, SEO-safe design system

  • Rationale: Ad-hoc page layouts created inconsistent markup, poor indexation, and recurring regressions. A modular system ensured semantic structure, accessibility, and SEO rules were enforced by default.
  • Trade-offs: Higher upfront design and documentation effort in exchange for long-term scalability and reduced maintenance cost.
  • Outcome: Faster page creation, fewer publishing errors, and a reusable foundation that supported consistent indexation and performance across storefront and content pages.

Decision #2: Prioritise performance over visual complexity

  • Rationale: Page speed and Core Web Vitals directly impact crawlability, rankings, and user trust—particularly on mobile. Performance was treated as a design constraint, not a technical afterthought.
  • Trade-offs: Reduced decorative elements and heavyweight assets, while preserving high-performing components such as promotional hero signalling.
  • Outcome: Lighthouse performance improved from 83 → 95, faster mobile load times, and clearer signals to both users and search engines without compromising brand or compliance requirements.

Process Snapshots

These snapshots show how real constraints — SEO rules, performance budgets, CMS limitations and delivery pressure — shaped the work. The focus was on building a system that performed reliably in real-world conditions — across seasonal changes, promotional states and compliance requirements — rather than optimising individual pages in isolation.

System-first structure: The new page architecture creates a reusable foundation for all indexed pages. Semantic hierarchy and SEO rules are built in by default, while high-traffic pages like Breakdown Cover retain flexibility for seasonal and promotional changes.
Design system build showing colour palette, typography, button styles, spacing, and reusable components used in the project. Expand image
Design build: A snapshot of the system that went into build — colours, typography, spacing and core components. The annotations highlight how accessibility, performance and SEO requirements were translated into practical, build-ready patterns.
Quant data playback. Promo and non-promo periods with mobile and desktop view with Step conversion data, heatmaps and online joining experience from NPS survey Expand image
Post-launch analysis: The redesigned landing page supported strong step conversion into the sales funnel, with promotional periods performing best. Heatmaps show the majority of engagement concentrated on the primary CTA, and NPS feedback confirms a clearer, easier joining experience.
Annotated funnel flow diagram showing test entry and exit points, edge cases, and expected behaviours for development handover. Expand image
Design-to-delivery workflow: A clear flow from design → build → QA → publish → monitor. Defined test points and feedback loops reduced regressions and made it easier to iterate safely post-launch.
A/B test results for the Reasons to Believe (RTB) component, showing improved step conversion by 2.69%. Expand image
A/B Test Result: Introducing the Reasons to Believe component under the hero increased step conversion by relative +2.69% with 94% statistical significance. Even at the top of a long funnel, the added trust signals helped users commit earlier — particularly on desktop.

Impact

This work removed structural SEO and performance constraints, and established a scalable storefront system that balanced search visibility, usability and commercial impact.

Quantitative Results

  • Lighthouse performance improved: 83 → 95.
  • Indexed pages increased by 10%.
  • Organic search traffic up ~15% within three months.
  • NPS for the joining experience: 80%+ reporting the website was easier to use.
  • A/B test of Reasons to Believe (RTB) component showed a relative +2.69% step conversion uplift.

Qualitative Outcomes

  • Team adoption of the design system improved consistency.
  • Faster page creation for new content.
  • Reduced errors in live publishing.
  • Built SEO best practices and guidance for designers.
  • Images got optimised and keywords were prioritised.
  • Aligned with other departments of the business with brand updates and compliance areas for information.
  • Clear guidance for designers and CMS editors.

Learnings & Leadership

Learnings

  • Involving developers early avoided late-stage performance and SEO surprises.
  • Treating performance as a design constraint led to better decisions across the board.
  • Doubling down on what already worked reduced unnecessary experimentation.
  • Modular systems scale far better than bespoke pages under delivery pressure.

Leadership

  • Aligned design, engineering and content around shared SEO and performance standards.
  • Led the menu header SEO impact analysis and handed over clear short-term wins and long-term recommendations to the owning team.
  • Supported and coached designers on SEO-aware design decisions.
  • Pushed for a system-led approach to reduce long-term maintenance cost.