WordPress website Rebuild for a Car Rim Restoration Company
Rebuilt a car rim restoration company's website from scratch: custom WordPress theme, no page builder, a photo-based quote form that transformed lead volume, and a 90+ mobile performance score.
Client
Industry
Services
Website
Problem
Felgilab's previous website ran on MODX and was holding the business back rather than helping it grow. Performance was poor (around 50 on mobile PageSpeed), there were no real conversion elements on the site, and the admin panel was difficult enough that the client couldn't confidently update content or add pages without developer help. The business needed a site that could actually generate leads and that the client could manage independently.
Goal
- Full redesign: page architecture, UX, visual design, and development
- Fully responsive across all devices
- Custom WordPress theme built from scratch — no page builder, no bloated plugins
- Full 4-language site: Polish, English, Russian, and Ukrainian
- New portfolio and gallery sections
- A lead-generation system built around how customers actually research this service
- An admin panel the client can genuinely use to edit and create pages
- Real user research before design — how people search for and evaluate rim restoration services, and how they behave on competitor sites
Results
- Mobile PageSpeed: Performance 92, Accessibility 91, Best Practices 96, SEO 100 — up from roughly 50 on the old MODX site
- A noticeable, sustained increase in form submissions after launching the photo-based quote form — the large majority of visitors now submit photos with their inquiry
- LocalBusiness structured data added, strengthening local search and Maps visibility
- Image assets optimized to modern formats, further improving load performance
- The client can now independently edit any page and create new ones — no developer dependency for routine content changes
Completed Work
- Custom-built WordPress theme, no page builder, built on Vite (lean JS/CSS output, zero jQuery dependency)
- Full multilingual implementation: Polish, English, Russian, and Ukrainian
- Lead form with photo upload: customers upload photos of damaged rims and receive a price and timeline estimate — the single feature that changed the volume of inbound leads
- Order-status lookup: customers can check their order status by phone number without calling in
- Real-time open/closed indicator reflecting actual business hours
- Service-specific landing page architecture (12+ individual service pages) for targeted search visibility
- LocalBusiness structured data implementation
- Modern image format optimization (WebP/AVIF)
- Fully custom, editable CMS structure so the client can manage content independently
- Research-driven design based on real user search behavior and competitor analysis
Project Highlights
Project Description
Project Overview
Felgilab restores and repairs car rims in Warsaw. I'd previously worked with them on SEO and conversion improvements to their existing MODX site — this project was a full rebuild: new architecture, new design, and a new technical foundation on WordPress, built to remove the performance and usability ceiling the old platform had reached.
Why a Full Rebuild, Not Another Round of Fixes
The MODX site had a hard ceiling: poor performance, no meaningful conversion path for visitors, and an admin experience that made the client dependent on a developer for basic content changes. Patching around those constraints indefinitely wasn't the right call — the business needed a new technical foundation it could actually grow on.
Designing Around Real User Behavior
Before touching design or code, I researched how people actually search for rim restoration services and how they behave once they land on a site — what they look for, what makes them leave, what makes them trust a business enough to submit an inquiry. The site's structure, from the homepage layout to the service page architecture, was built around that research rather than assumptions.
The Feature That Changed Everything: Photo-Based Quotes
The centerpiece of the new lead form is simple but effective: customers upload photos of their damaged or scratched rims directly in the inquiry form and receive an estimated price and timeline. It removes the friction of a phone call just to get a rough idea of cost — and it worked. The large majority of visitors now use it, and it became the biggest single driver of lead volume on the new site.
Order Status Lookup & Real-Time Store Status
Two smaller but meaningful additions: customers can check on their order's status by entering their phone number, without needing to call and interrupt the shop floor — and a real-time indicator shows whether the business is currently open, pulled from actual business hours rather than a static label.
Reaching a Multilingual Customer Base
Warsaw has a large Ukrainian- and Russian-speaking population alongside international residents, and Felgilab's customer base reflects that. The site is fully built in four languages — Polish, English, Russian, and Ukrainian — so visitors can research services, understand pricing, and submit a quote request in their own language rather than hitting a translation barrier at the moment they're deciding whether to trust the business.
Built as a Custom WordPress Theme — No Page Builder
The site runs on a custom-built WordPress theme with a lean, modern build process (Vite, minimal JS/CSS, no jQuery) — not a page-builder plugin stack. That keeps the site fast and maintainable, and it's paired with a CMS structure that lets the client edit any existing page or create new ones without touching code.
Performance, SEO & Technical Foundation
The rebuild focused as much on technical health as on visuals: mobile PageSpeed scores now sit at 92 (Performance), 91 (Accessibility), 96 (Best Practices), and 100 (SEO) — up from roughly 50 on the old site. That included structured data work (including LocalBusiness markup for local search and Maps visibility) and modern image format optimization, alongside a dedicated architecture of service-specific landing pages for search visibility across the range of services Felgilab offers.
Key Takeaways
A redesign only pays off when it's built around how real customers actually behave — the photo-upload quote form is the clearest example here, a single well-placed feature that measurably changed lead volume. Pairing that with a genuinely fast, technically sound foundation and a CMS the client can actually use turned the site from a liability into a working sales channel.
Technologies Used
WordPress
Swiper
PHP
JavaScript
Google Analytics
SEO
