Henson Robinson Company is a leading mechanical and roofing contractor in Central Illinois, with a rich history that dates back to 1861. The company became an employee-owned business in 1997 and acquired Petersburg Plumbing & Excavating in 2011. Henson Robinson is a multi-trade construction company, offering HVAC, plumbing and roofing for both residential and commercial clients with the aim of providing and installing quality products, backed by superior customer service and support.
Henson Robinson initially hired Clearfire to complete an SEO audit of their website several years ago.
Unfortunately, the outdated website was experiencing several significant issues, including poor performance on Google, clunky navigation, and buttons that didn’t work properly on mobile. Clearfire’s audit outlined the problems with the site and how each could be fixed.
Additionally, because Henson Robinson offers a multitude of services and trades with a diverse customer base, they found it challenging to tailor their website to various customer segments under each specialized department.
Clearfire recommended a complete redesign to address the company’s concerns. They partnered with us to create a brand-new site that would help their customers more easily navigate their services on both mobile and desktop.
To start, Clearfire walked Henson Robinson through our comprehensive process including research, discovery, content planning, information architecture and design, and other phases.
Information Architecture created in Whimsical
Overall, Henson Robinson wanted a professional site that clearly communicates company core values, rich local background, and detailed services. Along with the long-term history, the company also desired to highlight the valuable people ingrained in the company.
Even more specifically, one of the primary goals for Henson Robinson’s new site was to increase site traffic and grow search engine results so that both the commercial and residential service departments, as well as the residential installation department, could experience new, organic leads.
After evaluating the site’s overall usability, we identified a few significant issues that were likely affecting user experience. Since Google announced algorithm changes in 2020 that gives higher rank to websites that are engaging and easy-to-use, we knew we needed to alleviate obstacles to Henson Robinson’s web users, including confusing navigation, a confusing menu for both mobile and desktop, and a poor mobile experience.
With this vision, Clearfire designed and built Henson Robinson a custom responsive website with a new content management system on Craft CMS. We also organized and structured the pages properly in code to help search engines better understand the content and hierarchy of the website, optimizing all content for SEO.
Our style guide outlined the overall mood the design would follow, as well as the color palette, button styles, and typography.
As one of Henson Robinson’s main goals was to enhance user experience, we designed the site to clearly define the difference between the company’s brands and services, helping visitors find exactly what they are looking for.
For example, Petersburg Plumbing & Excavating is a newer division of Henson Robinson, focused on plumbing, sanitary sewers, storm sewers, water mains, water treatment plants, and much more. With the brand so well known within the community, we highlighted this division as a key part of the site but with navigation that ensures a reader can identify these separate services.
Another major success for Henson Robinson’s redesign has been site speed and performance, which is one of the most important factors in SEO rankings. Clearfire made critical improvements so the site would perform up to Google and other search engines’ standards, particularly on mobile. These included eliminating outdated practices like rotating image galleries and large files that slowed the site.
Every day we help companies like yours create and maintain websites and web-based applications of all shapes and sizes. On time and on budget.
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Our statewide organization was in a tremendous need of an updated website. Clearfire took the time to understand the coalition's unique needs and developed a site that benefits our member centers and also provides critical information to the general public. Our site is significantly easier to maintain now, allowing us to reach our members more efficiently and provide them with greater resources. Clearfire was great to work with and we look forward to working with them again in the future."
The Clearfire team is timely, professional, and extremely creative. We discovered them during a critical time soon after our global website launched, and when our previous agency had abandoned the project. Clearfire was there to our rescue and immediately settled into the project efficiently and productively, as if they had been working on the site from the beginning. They have not only corrected a lot of oversights but have taken the aesthetics and functionality of the site to the next level. Lastly, and most importantly, they are extremely pleasant to work with and take a collaborative, very personal approach to every project – big or small."
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