Rebuilding a Property & Asset Management Website for Performance, Search Visibility and Growth

The Challenge

GB Group is a property and asset management contractor delivering repairs, planned maintenance and wider property services for housing providers, government and private-sector clients.

Operating across six regions, Hereford, Telford, Donnington, Cardiff, Haverfordwest and Swindon, the business had outgrown its existing website.

The old site did not reflect:

• the scale of the operation
• the breadth of services
• the geographic footprint
• the quality of the organisation
• the recruitment needs of a growing directly employed team

It was also performing poorly in search and did not provide the technical foundation required for long-term digital growth.

The objective was to create a website that:

• reflected GB Group’s reputation
• supported both commercial and recruitment journeys
• improved search visibility
• performed exceptionally well on mobile
• provided a scalable foundation for future growth

Our Approach

We designed and developed the platform end to end, from initial wireframing through to launch.

Rather than treating the project as a brochure-site refresh, we approached it as a digital platform and search-performance project.

The site needed to work for several distinct audiences at the same time:

• housing and property managers
• procurement teams
• prospective employees
• apprentices
• subcontractors
• general visitors

Each journey was considered separately while remaining part of one coherent platform.

Services Delivered

This project required a combination of bespoke development, technical SEO and user experience design to create a fast, accessible and scalable platform.

Website Design & User Experience
Designing a clear, professional interface that communicates the scale of GB Group’s services while guiding different audiences towards the right next step

Next.js Development
Building a modern server-rendered platform designed for speed, stability and clean, indexable HTML

SEO & Answer Engine Optimisation
Structuring content, metadata and schema to improve visibility across traditional search engines and emerging answer-based search experiences

Recruitment & Careers Development
Creating dedicated journeys for vacancies, apprenticeships and prospective employees

Enquiry & Subcontractor Routing
Developing structured forms that direct enquiries and subcontractor applications to the appropriate internal team

One Website, Multiple Business Functions

The new site was designed to do more than explain what GB Group does.

It operates across several key business functions.

Marketing Website

The core site presents GB Group’s services, sectors and company information in a structured way that makes the scale of the organisation clear.

Visitors can quickly understand:

• what the business does
• who it works with
• where it operates
• how to make contact

Careers & Vacancies

Recruitment is an important part of GB Group’s ongoing growth.

The new platform includes dedicated areas for:

• live vacancies
• apprenticeships
• careers information

This gives prospective employees a clear route into the business while reducing reliance on disconnected recruitment channels.

News & Insights

The website includes a crawlable news and insight section designed to support long-tail search visibility and ongoing communication.

Regular content provides the business with a platform to publish:

• company updates
• project news
• recruitment information
• sector insight

This creates a stronger foundation for ongoing SEO and content growth.

Subcontractor Onboarding

The platform includes a structured subcontractor application journey.

Rather than relying on phone calls or unstructured email enquiries, prospective subcontractors can provide the required information through a guided form.

Submissions are routed directly to the appropriate internal team.

This reduces administrative friction and makes the website a more useful operational tool.

Smarter Enquiry Routing

Different types of enquiries need to reach different departments.

The website automatically routes:

• commercial enquiries
• recruitment enquiries
• subcontractor applications
• general contact requests

to the correct destination.

This creates a cleaner experience for users and reduces manual forwarding internally.

Private Admin Functionality

A dedicated private area provides internal functionality without cluttering the public-facing marketing website.

This keeps operational tools separate from the customer experience while allowing the wider platform to remain connected.

This reflects our broader approach to building websites that function as operational platforms, not just digital brochures.

Built for Performance from the Start

Performance was treated as a core design requirement rather than something to optimise after launch.

The platform was developed using Next.js with server-rendered output, creating clean and indexable HTML while maintaining a modern application experience.

Performance improvements include:

• modern image formats
• responsive image sizing
• lazy loading
• lean front-end delivery
• server-side rendering
• reduced layout movement

The result is a significantly faster mobile experience.

SEO & AEO Foundations

The website was built with search visibility embedded into the architecture.

This includes:

• clean semantic HTML
• page-level metadata
• structured data
• XML sitemap generation
• redirect management
• crawlable content
• clear internal linking

Historic URLs were redirected appropriately to preserve existing authority during migration.

Structured data also makes the organisation easier for search engines and answer engines to interpret.

This is particularly important as search evolves beyond traditional blue-link results.

Accessibility

The site was developed with accessibility in mind and tested against WCAG 2.1 AA principles.

This included consideration of:

• colour contrast
• heading hierarchy
• semantic structure
• keyboard navigation
• responsive usability

The result is a more inclusive experience across devices and user needs.

Reliable Enquiry Delivery

Transactional email functionality was built into the platform so enquiries are delivered consistently to the correct team.

Users also receive confirmation that their enquiry has been received.

This may seem like a small detail, but it improves trust and reduces uncertainty at a critical point in the user journey.

Deployment & Hosting

The platform is hosted on DigitalOcean with:

• custom domain configuration
• SSL
• automated deployment
• Git-based release workflow

Approved code changes can be deployed automatically when merged into the main branch.

This provides a repeatable and reliable deployment process while reducing manual release overhead.

Performance Results

The new platform delivered strong measurable technical performance.

Google Lighthouse — Mobile

95 — Performance

100 — SEO

2.0 seconds — Largest Contentful Paint

0 — Cumulative Layout Shift

Every Core Web Vital measured within Google’s green performance band.

What Those Numbers Mean

Technical scores only matter when they improve the experience for real users.

95 Performance
Pages load quickly on mobile devices, reducing friction for visitors browsing away from a desk.

100 SEO
The technical foundations give search engines clean, accessible and structured content to crawl and understand.

2.0s Largest Contentful Paint
Important content appears quickly, helping users reach information without unnecessary waiting.

Zero Layout Shift
Pages remain visually stable as they load, preventing accidental clicks and creating a more polished experience.

Impact

The rebuild has given GB Group a platform that better reflects the scale and professionalism of the organisation.

The new site provides:

• significantly improved mobile performance
• stronger technical SEO foundations
• clearer presentation of services and sectors
• dedicated recruitment journeys
• structured subcontractor onboarding
• smarter enquiry routing
• accessible design
• scalable platform architecture
• automated deployment

The website now supports both marketing and operational needs while providing a stronger foundation for future organic growth.

What This Demonstrates

The GB Group project highlights The DM Lab’s ability to combine:

• Website Strategy
• Bespoke Web Development
• Next.js
• Technical SEO
• Answer Engine Optimisation
• User Experience Design
• Recruitment Functionality
• Process Automation
• Accessibility
• Digital Platform Architecture

to create websites that perform commercially, technically and operationally.

Final Thought

The GB Group project demonstrates what happens when website design, search performance and operational functionality are considered together.

The objective was not simply to make the business look better online.

It was to build a platform that reflects the scale of GB Group’s operation, helps the right audiences take action and gives search engines a clearer understanding of what the business does.

The result is a fast, accessible and search-ready digital platform built to support the next stage of the company’s growth.

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