104 Blog Posts, 800 Redirects and One Slightly Stressed Business Owner
If you’ve visited the new Metalier website, you may have noticed that it looks rather different. That isn’t an accident.
The truth is that the old website had become a problem. Like many businesses, we followed the advice that was fashionable at the time. Around eight years ago, we were encouraged to build multiple websites and interlink them as part of an SEO strategy. It sounded sensible. More websites meant more opportunities to be found online. Unfortunately, reality proved a little different. The websites still attracted visitors, but it was confusing.
Why we rebuilt the Metalier Website
The decision to rebuild wasn’t simply about making the website prettier. It was about making it useful. Over time, we had accumulated five interrelated websites. Each contained useful information, but together they became increasingly difficult to manage. Content was duplicated. Information became scattered. Visitors often landed on parts of the website that weren’t the most relevant for them. Updating one site often meant updating several others. The whole thing became a little like owning five houses and discovering that every time you wanted to change a light bulb, you had to visit them all. They were becoming harder and harder to maintain. Eventually, I stopped blogging, which was a shame because writing has always been one of my favourite parts of the business. After twenty years in the decorative metal industry, I have accumulated rather a lot of opinions and stories, and a blog is the perfect place to share them.
The new Metalier Website has a very different philosophy
The homepage is long. Very long.
That is entirely deliberate.
People don’t browse websites the way they used to.
They scroll.
Mobile phones have changed our habits.
Most visitors are perfectly happy to keep moving down a page if the content remains interesting and relevant.
So instead of forcing visitors to click endlessly through layers of navigation, we decided to put most of the information people are looking for in one place.
The homepage explains the fundamentals of the Metalier system
• What Metalier is
• How decorative liquid metal works
• Our water-based system
• Signature metals and finishes
• Environmental benefits
• Suitable substrates
• Typical applications
• Project examples from around the world
• How to contact us
For those who want to explore further, we’ve added detailed project galleries, technical information, downloadable resources and a growing blog section.
The rebuild involved migrating 104 blog posts, creating more than 800 redirects and untangling years of accumulated digital spaghetti. There were moments when the process felt less like website development and more like archaeology.
But we’re delighted with the result.
The new Metalier website is easier to navigate, easier to maintain and, most importantly, more useful for architects, designers, applicators and distributors.
And now that the heavy lifting is done, I can get back to something I enjoy far more than website migrations.
Writing!!
In our next article, I’ll explain one of the most important ideas that influenced the new website and why we decided to make so much information freely available. It all started with a book called The Ice Cream Funnel.
If you haven’t explored the Metalier Website yet, we’d love to hear what you think.