WorkCase study / Chauffeur and airport travel

Apex Chauffeurs.

A Birmingham chauffeur company was selling a premium service through a template site that opened with a discount popup. We built a custom theme, a booking flow that draws the route and quotes as you type, a site that loads in a fraction of a second, and a local search foundation of 40 town pages and 60 journal articles.

Client
Apex Chauffeurs Ltd
Sector
Executive, airport and event travel
Services
Design, custom theme, booking plugin, speed, SEO
Delivered
September to October 2026
Platform
WordPress, custom theme
New Apex Chauffeurs homepage with the booking bar over a dark hero
21reqrequests per page load, down from 50Launch speed pass
359KBhomepage weight, down from 859 KBLaunch speed pass
0.4slargest paint, down from 2.0 secondsLaunch speed pass
40townstown and area pages, each with its own copySearch foundation

01 / Where it started

A premium service, on a template.

Apex runs executive airport transfers, event travel and business hire across the West Midlands and the UK. Its customers pay for trust and polish, and the old site opened with a full-screen discount popup before a visitor saw a single car.

  • A page builder and a heavy theme that looked like the template it was.
  • A generic white booking form on a stock sky background, with no map and no price until the very end.
  • The website was working against the brand it was meant to sell.

02 / How it ran

Design, book, speed, search.

From a custom theme to a launch speed pass and the content that gets the site found.

Step 1
01

Design

A dark editorial look with a gold accent and large type, desktop to phone.

Step 2
02

Custom theme

The page builder and its plugins removed completely, not just switched off.

Step 3
03

Booking flow

Journey, vehicle, payment: autocomplete, a live route map and a starting price.

Step 4
04

Fleet and services

Pages for each vehicle class, airports, events, business travel and areas.

Step 5
05

Speed pass

Caching, script and style trimming, self-hosted fonts and image handling.

Step 6
06

Search foundation

40 town pages, a 60-article journal, schema and rewritten titles.

03 / What we built

A booking that quotes as you type.

The old form was replaced with a three-step flow. Pick-up and drop-off autocomplete, the route is drawn on a live map, and the distance, duration and starting price appear before the customer commits. Return journeys and extra stops are supported, and checkout asks only for what is needed to take a booking and a card payment.

  • The popup is gone. The first screen is the booking bar.
  • Native scrolling. Smooth-scroll libraries were removed after the client found them jerky, replaced by light scroll-in effects.
  • Clear terms on child seats, luggage and the Range Rover, taken from the company’s own policies.
  • Contact form, WhatsApp chat and one-tap calling on every page.
Take one / Look

Dark and gold

A custom theme that feels like the cars, not a template.

Take two / Book

Map and price up front

The customer sees the route and the price before committing.

Take three / Found

Built for local search

Town pages and a journal matched to how people search.

04 / Before and after

From popup to booking bar.

The old site was captured from a full copy, popup and all.

Before
Old Apex Chauffeurs homepage with a discount popup over the hero
BeforePage-builder homepage, covered by a discount popup.
After
New Apex Chauffeurs homepage with the booking bar in the hero
AfterThe booking bar sits in the hero, in the first screen.
Before
Old booking form
BeforeA plain form: no map, no price until the end.
After
New booking form with a live route map
AfterAutocomplete, live route and starting price.

On a phone

Before
Old Apex site on a phone
BeforeOld, first screen.
After
New Apex site on a phone
AfterNew, first screen.

05 / Measured

A fraction of a second.

Logged-out homepage, before and after the launch speed pass.

Launch speed pass

Homepage
MetricBeforeAfter
Requests per load5021
Page weight859 KB359 KB
Server response (TTFB)0.9 sabout 0.05 s
Largest paint2.0 s0.4 s

Before and after

Homepage

Requests

Old site
0
New site
0

Page weight (KB)

Old site
0
New site
0

Largest paint (s)

Old site
0
New site
0

Figures are from our own tests during the launch speed pass. Real-world speed varies by device and connection.

06 / Search foundation

Found for the journey, and the place.

  • 40 town and area pages, each with its own copy, local detail and FAQs, not one template with the name swapped. Overlap between pages was measured and is being rewritten in batches.
  • A 60-article journal on airports, events, business travel and local questions, each checked against the company’s own terms.
  • Structured data for the business, its services and each page’s FAQs, readable by search engines and AI answer engines.
  • Every title and meta description rewritten to be unique, with a clean sitemap.
  • 113 Google reviews at 5.0 shown on the site.
WordPressCustom themeBooking pluginLive route mapCard paymentsPage cachingSelf-hosted fontsLocalBusiness schemaFAQ schema40 town pages

07 / What comes next

Live, fast, and building.

The site is new, so there are no traffic or ranking figures yet. We will add search and booking results here once it has run for a few months.

Next up

Keep watching.