Most firms don’t decide their website is out of date. They notice it slowly. A new hire mentions it. A prospect asks a question the site should have answered. Someone tries to add a case study and gives up. By the time anyone says it out loud, the business has usually moved a long way past the site that’s meant to represent it.
That’s where Evalua8 was when it came to us. Evalua8 is a Bournemouth-based outsourced accounting and financial management firm. It builds finance functions for growing agencies and SaaS businesses, covering management accounting, cash flow forecasting and accounting across multiple jurisdictions. It has set up more than 50 finance departments in over six jurisdictions.
The work was impressive. The website wasn’t. This article is about how we closed that gap, and how you can tell whether your own firm has the same problem.
The problem: a website stuck where the business started
Evalua8’s old site was built on Wix. Wix is a perfectly good way to get a business online quickly, and plenty of firms start there. But Evalua8 had grown, and the site hadn’t grown with it.
Three things were holding it back.
It looked dated next to the clients it wanted to win. Evalua8’s ideal clients are ambitious, digital-first agencies and SaaS companies. They notice design. A logo and site that felt old-fashioned sent the wrong signal before anyone had read a word.
It was hard to change. The site was inflexible, so it couldn’t easily take on the structure and content a growing firm needs.
Nobody could find it. Evalua8 had little to no keyword visibility and low domain authority. People were searching for exactly the kind of help Evalua8 offers, and finding other firms instead.
None of these is unusual. For professional services firms in particular, the website is often built once, early on, and then left alone while the business gets on with client work.
What we found
When a site underperforms, the tempting fix is to change one thing: a new homepage, a few blog posts, a fresh coat of paint. Sometimes that’s enough.
Here, the three problems were tangled together. A new design on the old platform would still have been hard to update. Better search content on a dated site would have brought visitors to something that undersold the firm. And a new logo on its own would have changed how Evalua8 looked without changing whether anyone could find it.
So the question wasn’t “how do we fix the website?” It was “how do we make Evalua8’s presence online match the quality of the work it does?” That meant brand, platform and content together.
What we did
1. Started with a workshop, not a design
Before drawing anything, we ran a collaborative workshop with Evalua8 to understand its brand values, visual preferences and tone of voice. This is the step that’s easiest to skip and most expensive to get wrong. If you don’t agree on who you are and how you sound, every later decision becomes a matter of taste.
2. Refreshed the brand
We replaced an old-fashioned logo with a crisp, modern identity, and carried it through the whole site. The aim wasn’t to make Evalua8 look like a tech company. It was to look as clear and credible as the finance functions it builds.
3. Rebuilt the site on WordPress
We rebuilt the website from scratch, moving it from Wix to WordPress. That gave Evalua8 a flexible platform that the team can edit easily, so adding a service, a case study or an article doesn’t mean waiting for someone else.
4. Organised it around what clients look for
Rather than mirroring how the firm is organised internally, we structured the site around the questions a prospect arrives with: what do you do (services), do you work with businesses like mine (sectors, with agencies and SaaS front and centre), can you prove it (case studies) and can you help me think this through (resources).
5. Wrote every key page for search
Each key page was written and optimised around the search terms Evalua8’s prospects actually use. New blog content then extended its reach into the wider questions those prospects ask.
What happened
The new site is easy for the team to edit, clearly explains who Evalua8 helps and how, and is built to be found. Organic keyword visibility rose by 754%.
It was all delivered on a set budget. As Evalua8’s founder, Neethu Stephen, put it: “They worked with Evalua8 on a set budget and provided great results, and we are very thankful for their help and support during our rebranding journey.”
That last point matters. A rebrand and a new website can sound like a large, open-ended project. It doesn’t have to be, if the scope is clear from the start.
Has your firm outgrown its website?
If you’re not sure whether you need a refresh, a rebuild or both, these questions will help you decide.
1. Would your best client recognise you from your website?
Look at your site as if you were the client you most want to win. Does it reflect the size, quality and focus of the firm you are today, or the one you were when it was built?
2. Does it describe the business you have now?
List the services and sectors you actually win work in. Then check how many of them have their own clear page. Gaps here are common when a firm has grown into new areas.
3. Can your team update it without help?
Try adding a case study or changing a service description. If it takes a developer, a support ticket or a workaround, your site will quietly drift out of date, however good it looks on launch day.
4. Is it structured around your clients, or around you?
Clients arrive asking “can you help someone like me?” Navigation built around internal team names or a long services list makes them work harder to find the answer.
5. Do you show up for the searches that matter?
Write down five things a prospect might type into Google when they need you. Search for them. If you’re not there, your competitors and the big directories are taking those enquiries.
6. Do you need a rebrand, or just clarity?
Not every firm needs a new logo. Sometimes the identity is fine and the messaging is the problem. A short workshop on who you’re for and how you sound will usually tell you which it is, before you spend anything on design.
7. Should you fix it in one go?
If the answers above point to problems with your brand, your platform and your visibility, it’s often more efficient to tackle them together. Rebuilding twice, once for the look and again for search, usually costs more than doing it once properly.
A last word
For professional services firms, the website is often the first meeting. Prospects decide whether you’re credible, relevant and worth a call before they ever speak to you. If your expertise is obvious in the room but not online, that gap is costing you work you’ll never hear about.
If that sounds familiar, you can see how we approach brand strategy, identity and messaging, or how we work with accountants, advisers and other professional services firms. And once the site is in good shape, our piece on how a Harley Street surgeon outranked the NHS shows how patient, useful content keeps building on it.
