Evolving Arbutus Capital to a modern digital experience
How I rage-redesigned, SEO’ed, and rebuilt Arbutus Capital’s website, leading to a 24x increase in organic business enquiries.
The original site
A longtime friend and owner of Arbutus Capital—an equipment leasing company—was struggling to get new clients.
His site hadn’t been updated in a very long time, so I told him that he could get more organic business with an updated website and a solid SEO strategy.
A horrible redesign
18 months later...
They redesigned their site but only received 3 new enquiries in the last year, and it wasn’t worth the small fortune they paid to do so.
What’s more, those 3 enquiries were a result of paid advert campaigns, not organic traffic.
I looked at their new site and understood what was going on—They went from the world’s worst website to the world’s second worst website.
Other than a few nice images and some new colours, everything was just... horrible.
Problems
Arbutus Capital’s new website was STILL horrible and they only received 3 new enquiries in the past year.
Goals
Increase organic enquiries through the website by improving trust, relevance, and visibility.
Trust: Redesign the experience to build immediate credibility and reduce friction.
Relevance: Align content with high-intent search behaviour to drive qualified traffic.
Visibility: Strengthen technical SEO to improve discoverability and search performance.
Discovery Session
I kicked things off with a Discovery Session to better understand their business, position in the market, and the current state of their site.
This Discovery Session had some extra questions because I was also going to do their SEO work.
Performed an SEO audit
Using the tools I had access to while working at Moz and STAT, I conducted an SEO audit which included:
- What they were ranking for
- If they ranked for any of their desired search terms
- How their site was performing technically
- How they compared to their competitors
- Opportunities for improving their rankings
Gathered usage data
I installed FullStory into their backend to collect recordings of users going through their site. This let me see what users were doing on each page, what they were reading, and what they were skipping.
I also dug into their Google Analytics data to see how pages performed at a higher level.
What I learned
Some blog pages performed well, but when users organically reached the main site, they skipped over the long paragraphs and backed out quickly.
The site either didn’t have what they were looking for, or they couldn’t find it.
Competitive Analysis
I got a list of their competitors from our initial Discovery Session and dove into their sites, calling out what worked well and what did not from a UX perspective.
What I learned
Interestingly enough, most competitors didn’t have amazing websites. Their sites were better, just not great. This meant we had an opportunity to quickly build trust with potential clients.
Wireframed the site
We knew from site usage data that 82% of their visitors were on desktop and 17% were on mobile, so I started with wireframes for the desktop version first.
First pass of SEO
With the first draft of the wireframes done, I could see where text was going to be placed and how much room I had to work with.
I started plugging in the list of targeted keywords I created based on my SEO dive and findings.
Prototyped and reviewed
I then put everything into an InVision prototype (RIP InVision) and reviewed it with Arbutus. This review was mainly high-level functionality, content, and information architecture.
What I learned
There were a few minor adjustments needed, but with Arbutus happy at the check-in, I was free to start coming up with mockups.
Colour Palette
Their first redesign included a new logo with updated colours which Arbutus wanted to keep. This gave me a starting point to finalize a colour palette.
The biggest change I added was a vibrant orange-red colour, inspired by the Arbutus tree, for main CTAs and callouts.
Mockups and reviews
I created different mockups and put them into another prototype to review more easily with Arbutus. There was also a prototype for mobile and tablet.
What I learned
Arbutus was extremely happy with the progress and direction of the site. We landed on a final direction and got sign-off to start building it.
Built the website
I built the site using Elementor in WordPress and worked with a content writer to publish blog posts every few months.
I also added several tracking tools in the backend so I could monitor the performance of the site and its SEO, and provide monthly reporting.
24x increase in submissions
Arbutus went from 3 submissions a year to receiving around 4–8 submissions a month. They got 72 submissions in the last year alone. That’s a 24× increase from where they started.
Their average position in search results is also steadily improving, bringing more traffic and submissions. It moved from an average position of 30 to around position 8—the first page on Google.
A new approach to AA Accessibility
Reinvented how Bar charts can meet accessibility standards without sacrificing aesthetics.
Next Case Study
One weekend redesign turned into a new company-wide initiative.
How consolidating our “Aha!” moments into one screen became our most popular page, plus the story of a dramatic redesign that kicked off a larger company initiative.
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