The challenge
A trusted school with a website that had grown for 15 years.
Ichen Art Academy has taught drawing, painting and portfolio prep since 2011. Its website had grown page by page into 95 live pages, a separate gallery site, and hundreds of PDFs and images.
New families struggled to answer the first question every parent has: which class is right for my child? Returning families relied on bookmarks, printed flyers and Google results that pointed deep into the old site. And AI assistants, where more parents now start their search, couldn't read it at all.
Most redesigns break old links. Every broken link is a parent who lands on an error page and calls someone else.
Before and after
Same school. A clearer front door.
Each number on the screenshot matches a note. Tap or hover one to highlight it.
- 1No headlineA photo, but nothing that says what the school is or who it's for.
- 2The first ask is a form"Class Selection Form" is for enrolled families, not new ones.
- 3Four menu itemsNo way to find a class by age or interest.
- 4A badge over the contentA red pop-up sits on top of every page.
- 1A clear promiseWhat the school is, where, and since when, in the first line.
- 2One next step"Book a Free Trial" stays in the header on every page.
- 3Find a Program29 classes, filtered by age, track and type.
- 4Now enrollingCurrent schedules, one tap from the first screen.
- 5Both campusesEach phone number, tappable on a phone.
More pages
Drag to compare. The old program finder opened on a banner. The new one shows every class up front.
Scroll the whole homepage
The new homepage tells the same story in 40% less scrolling, with the free trial one tap away the whole way down.
Results
What changed, in numbers.
Bookmarks, Google results and printed flyers still land on the right page.
Assistants like ChatGPT can read programs and schedules.
Button contrast went from 2.2:1 to 8.6:1.
The homepage loads lighter on phones.
| Area | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Main headline | None on the page | One clear headline |
| Next step for parents | Class Selection Form banner | Book a Free Trial, header and hero |
| Finding a class | Program pages by name | 29 programs, filters and search |
| Student gallery | A separate website | 539 artworks in 13 class galleries |
| Info for Google and AI | No structured data | School profile, llms.txt, plain-text pages |
| Homepage requests | 147 | 66 |
| Speed score | Not measured | 91 to 99 on key pages |
How we measured: homepage elements and requests in desktop Chrome on Nov 7, 2026. Speed and accessibility from Lighthouse before launch. AI readiness from is-agentic.com, before and after.
A redesign's biggest risk isn't the design. It's the 680 links people already rely on.Key insight from the project
How we did it
Six steps, three days.
- 1Day 1 · Inventory
Find everything that already exists
Before designing anything, we listed every address the old site ever had, so nothing would quietly break.
680old URLs found95live pages crawled569pages, PDFs and images at risk - 2Day 1 · Redirects
Keep every old link alive
- 288 permanent redirects, each landing in one hop
- Current PDFs and images kept at their original addresses
- 666 of 680 resolve. The other 14 were already broken on the old site.
- 3Day 2 · Structure
Reorganize around what parents ask
- Kept the menu returning families knew, added Find a Program for new ones
- Registration as five clear tabs: steps, schedules, tuition, calendar, policies
- 614 gallery files sorted into 13 class galleries, duplicates removed
- 4Day 2 · Accuracy
Check every claim
Every sentence with a number was checked against 84 archived pages. Where the old site disagreed with itself, we flagged it for the owners instead of guessing.
- 5Day 3 · Testing
Test it like a parent, a search engine and an AI
258links crawled, 0 broken671gallery images verified10AI readability checks91 to 99speed score - 6Day 3 and after · Launch
Ship, then keep listening
Live on day three. Each round of owner feedback shipped within a day: full faculty bios, student accomplishments, honor roll posters, and retired classes taken down.
30 schedule PDFs for the Pleasanton campus were linked to Fremont's. Found during link checks and fixed before parents noticed.
Security
Safer by default, not by request.
Old websites collect risk quietly: widgets nobody remembers adding, scripts from retired services, links that aren't encrypted. We look for these on every site and help you move off them.
| On the homepage | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Outside services loading code | 10, including a widget service and another Weebly site | 0 |
| Links over plain HTTP | 59 | 0, everything on HTTPS |
| Analytics | A retired Google Analytics script | Privacy-friendly analytics on the school's own domain |
| Gallery | A separate site, linked over plain HTTP | Built in, on the main domain |
Measured by loading each homepage in Chrome on Nov 7, 2026 and listing every outside host it contacted.
Every outside script can change without you knowing. Fewer of them means fewer ways for a stranger to tamper with what parents see or type.
Beyond the brief
The things nobody asks for until they break.
Readable by AI assistants
When a parent asks ChatGPT about art classes in Fremont, it can now read the school's programs, schedules and results directly.
No inquiry gets lost
Every contact form is saved, emailed to the front desk and posted to the team's chat, with an automatic retry.
Links that preview properly
Share any page in a text or group chat and it shows what the page is, with the school's image.
Easier on every eye
High-contrast buttons and bigger text. Grandparents enroll kids too.
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