A website for Stratworth Advisory, measured against the old one.
Stratworth Advisory helps UK business owners build the value of their business and get it ready to sell. Its founder, Nik Spencer, needed a website that works like a good first meeting: it explains the process, lets an owner see how ready their business is, and books a conversation. I replaced the old WordPress site, and before the switch I measured both sites the same way, on the same day.
Live on its own domain
stratworthadvisory.com
Want one built the same way? £0 to see it. A site this size is quoted in writing before I build. A standard website is £650. How that works
The old site against the new one.
Both home pages were measured on 8 October 2026, a few hours before the switch: the same browser, the same width (390 pixels), the same connection, and nothing cached. The times include the distance to each server, so the gap between the two columns matters more than the exact seconds.
| Measured | Old site | New site |
|---|---|---|
| What shows first | A black video and a cookie banner | The headline and two clear next steps |
| Main content showing | 7.4 seconds | 0.8 seconds |
| Fully loaded | 10.2 seconds | 1.0 seconds |
| Page weight | 2.3 MB | 0.4 MB |
| Requests | 87 | 16 |
| Pages | 22, including basket and checkout pages | 38, including ten guides and a glossary |
| Built on | WordPress, Elementor and 8 plugins | Hand-built HTML and CSS, no plugins |
In plain terms: the old home page took 7.4 seconds to show its main content. The new one takes 0.8.
At full width the new home page also loads Nik’s film, so it weighs about the same as the old one (2.5 MB against 2.2 MB), but it shows its main content in 1.8 seconds against 7.5.
What Stratworth Advisory needed.
The old site ran on WordPress with Elementor and eight plugins, including WooCommerce and a subscriptions add-on to sell the plans.
The first thing an owner saw was a black video with one word on it and a cookie banner over the bottom half, and the main content took over seven seconds to arrive. Twenty-two pages, several of them shop and basket pages, and one blog post.
Nik sells something considered: a plan to raise what a business is worth before it is sold. An owner needs to understand the process, see where they stand and trust the person before booking a call. The website had to do that job before anyone picked up the phone.
What is on it.
Thirty-eight pages: the home page, the SCALE2SELL® method and its eight pillar pages, four services, the plans, a discovery session and a strategy day, the readiness assessment, About Nik, testimonials, ten guides and a glossary for owners preparing to sell, FAQs, contact, the Client Vault and the legal pages.
The details
- Pages
- 38, including ten guides, a glossary and eight method pages
- Built on
- Plain HTML and CSS, put together by a Python script. No WordPress, no plugins
- Hosting
- Netlify, on Stratworth’s own account
- Forms
- A Netlify enquiry form with a spam trap, and the readiness assessment
- Payments
- Stripe Checkout and Stripe’s customer portal, with the terms tick box built in
- Redirects
- Every old WordPress address mapped to its new page
Month one on Google.
The new site went live on 7 October 2026. These are its first 25 days in Google Search Console.
| Measured | Result |
|---|---|
| Times Google showed it | 3,139, from 7 to 31 October |
| Daily average | 93 a day in the first half of October, 144 a day in the second |
| Pages on Google | 36 of 38 |
| Shown for the guides | 1,858 times, 59% of the total |
| Page 1 for | “business coach for founder who wants to exit uk” (position 4) |
| Clicks through to the site | 23 |
Times shown means how often the site appeared in Google’s search results. Source: Google Search Console, checked 2 November 2026.
Found on Google and in AI answers.
Speed is only the start. I ran the same search and AI audit over both sites on 8 October 2026: page titles, descriptions, headings, structured data (the labels that tell Google and AI tools what a business is), AI crawler rules, sitemaps and image descriptions, on the home page, the readiness assessment, About Nik and the FAQ.
| Checked | Old site | New site |
|---|---|---|
| Page titles | “Home - Stratworth Advisory” style, made by the theme | Written for a real search on every page, 31 to 60 characters, none repeated |
| Meta descriptions | None on any of the 4 pages tested | Every page, 120 to 155 characters, none repeated |
| Main heading (H1) | None on the home page; 1 of the 4 pages had one | One on every page, matching what the page is about |
| Structured data | The WordPress SEO plugin’s default: WebPage, Organization, a site search that didn’t exist | Organization and ProfessionalService, Person for Nik, Service with priced plans in an OfferCatalog, FAQPage, Article, a WebApplication for the assessment, and a DefinedTermSet for the method and the glossary |
| FAQ | A FAQ page with no FAQ markup | 40 questions marked up as FAQPage, word for word with the page |
| AI crawlers in robots.txt | None named | GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended, Bingbot and others, all allowed |
| Files written for AI assistants | None | llms.txt (11,000 characters) and llms-full.txt (448,000 characters) |
| Plain-text copies of each page | None | A Markdown twin of all 38 pages, linked from each page’s head |
| Sitemap | 22 addresses, including basket, checkout and members’ pages | 38 real pages, each with its last-changed date, plus 41 image entries |
| Guides | 1 blog post | 10 guides citing UK sources, and a 46-term glossary |
| Share cards | One generic image | 33 page-specific cards, 1200 by 630 |
| Old addresses | Not applicable | 84 redirect rules, so every old WordPress and WooCommerce address lands on its new page |
| Image descriptions (alt text) | 6 of 14 images had one | 9 of 14, the other 5 marked as decorative |
| Company number and registered office | Not shown | On every page, as UK disclosure rules require |
| Instant indexing | None | IndexNow set up for Bing and the engines that share it |
Checked on 8 October 2026 against the live old site and the new site on Netlify, before the domain moved. Structured data is not shown to visitors, but it is how Google and AI tools work out who a business is, what it sells and what it costs.
Everything under the hood.
The full build list. Nothing here is a template setting: each item was decided for this site.
Show the full technical list
Content
- 38 public pages, up from 8 content pages
- The SCALE2SELL® method and its 8 pillar pages, each with a self-check
- 4 service pages: exit planning, succession planning, growth strategy, investor readiness
- Plans with prices on the page: £495, £995 and £3,500 a month
- 10 guides that cite only UK sources: the British Business Bank, GOV.UK, HMRC, ICAEW, Acas and the Employee Ownership Association
- A 46-term glossary and a 40-question FAQ
- A readiness assessment scored pillar by pillar, with no email needed to see the score
Search
- Every title and description written and checked by a script: lengths, no duplicates
- Internal links set out as hub and spoke, so each pillar and guide points back to the method and the assessment
- 84 redirect rules, specific ones before catch-alls, including old WooCommerce, membership and sitemap addresses
- The netlify.app copy redirects to the real domain, so only one version gets indexed
- Sitemap with last-changed dates and image entries
- IndexNow, so Bing hears about changes the same day
AI search
- robots.txt names and allows the AI search and assistant crawlers
- llms.txt summarises the business for AI assistants; llms-full.txt carries the full text
- A Markdown twin of every page, linked with rel=“alternate”
- The method and the glossary marked up as DefinedTermSets, so each term has a fixed meaning
- FAQ answers marked up word for word as they appear on the page
Structured data
- Organization and ProfessionalService, tied to the Companies House record
- Person for Nik, with his occupation and what he knows about
- Service on each service page, with audience, channel and terms
- The plans as an OfferCatalog with monthly prices
- Article on every guide, FAQPage on the FAQ, WebApplication for the assessment
- No review or star markup, on purpose: Google treats a business’s own testimonials as self-serving
Design
- Colours sampled from the logo: navy #002352 and gold #CFAC43, with a darker text-safe gold #7D6218 for small type
- Newsreader for headings and Jost for body text, both self-hosted, variable and cut to the Latin character set
- Fluid type that scales smoothly from 375 to 1440 pixels wide
- A light film grain on every navy surface
- Real photos of Nik at work, no stock
Speed
- Static pages and self-hosted fonts: no third-party calls before the visitor chooses
- The background film loads after the page, at 0.9 MB at 390 pixels wide
- Lab test with Lighthouse’s mobile settings (slow 4G, CPU slowed four times): main content in 1.1 to 2.3 seconds, layout shift 0.03 or less, almost no blocking time, on every page tested
Payments and the Client Vault
- Stripe Checkout and Stripe’s customer portal, built in and ready to switch on
- Checkout asks for the business name and a tick against the terms, and records which version of the terms was agreed
- A six-month minimum term built into the plans
- Sign-in by emailed link, no passwords
- Four vaults that unlock after the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 6th payments
- Client uploads and an admin page for Nik
- 23 serverless functions on Netlify, no WordPress and no database to patch
Security
- A strict Content Security Policy: only the site itself, Calendly and Stripe
- HSTS with preload, frames blocked, a locked-down permissions policy
- Member and API addresses kept out of search results
- A members’ page on the old site was open to Google; the new vault is behind sign-in
Why it is built the way it is.
Measure the old site first
Before building anything I measured the old home page: 2.3 MB, 87 files to load and 7.4 seconds to the main content. Every choice on the new site was checked against those numbers.
A headline, not a black video
The top of the page now says what Stratworth does and offers two next steps. The film is still there, one tap away, with sound.
The assessment before the sales pitch
Owners can score their own readiness at no cost. It builds trust, and the owners who book a call already know where they stand.
Guides that answer real questions
Ten guides and a glossary answer what owners search for before a sale, such as how long it takes and what makes a business worth more.
No WordPress to look after
No plugins to update and no database to break or hack. The site is files on Netlify, and the logins are Stratworth’s.
Built to sell plans properly
Each plan has its own page and price. Checkout asks for the business name and a tick against the terms, so a minimum term is agreed in writing.
I’ll build it first. You decide after.
Tell me what your business does and where. If you already have a website, I rebuild it, so you can put the two side by side. I send you three homepage designs within a day, then build the whole website in the one you pick, every page written, usually in about 2 days, and send you a link. Look at it in your own time, and show the owner and anyone else with a say.
If you want it, it’s £650: a £162.50 deposit once you’re happy with the design, and the rest within 7 days of it going live. A bigger site, built around stock, listings or several locations, is quoted in writing before I build. If you don’t want it, say so and it comes down. You pay nothing, and I won’t follow it up.
What is yours, and the small print
- Your domain (your web address, like yourbusiness.co.uk) is bought in your name, on your card. About £10 a year, paid to the company you buy it from, not to me. I send you a one-page guide to buying it.
- Every login is handed over in writing once it is paid for, and the hosting moves to an account in your name at no cost. Nothing is locked to me.
- No monthly fee unless you choose monthly care: £29 a month for up to five changes, stop any time.
- If you change your mind after saying yes, the 25% is kept for the work done. If I can’t get it live for a reason on my side, it comes back in full.
- You pay by bank transfer to the account named on the invoice. My bank details will never change by message.
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yourbusiness.co.ukNot built yet
Send me your business and I’ll build it.
Your business name, what you do and where. That is enough to start. I build it, send you the link, and it costs you nothing to see it.
You deal with me, Archie Spencer. I build every site myself. I reply within 24 hours.
Said yes on a call already? You don’t need this form. Your link comes through on WhatsApp.
Got it, thank you. It has come straight to me.
I reply within 24 hours. Within a day I send you three homepage designs. Pick one and I build the whole website, usually in about 2 days. Nothing is payable unless you want it.
Got photos or a logo? Send them on WhatsApp, or email archie@archiespencer.com.
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