FIRST-PARTY CASE STUDY · 9 min

Website Redesign Case Study: North Growth Lab

Updated October 15, 2026

How we rebuilt our studio website around real projects, distinct service pages and crawlable content, with a practical release record and clear measurement limits.

This is our own studio website, not a commissioned client project. The implementation described here was checked on October 15, 2026. The August search figures below are historical evidence, not results of the October rebuild. No increase in rankings, qualified enquiries or revenue is claimed.

The business changed, so the evidence and structure had to change.

The earlier site emphasized local home-service demonstrations. The current direction is a digital studio for established, brand-conscious businesses, supported by websites and applications that people can actually inspect. The October update removed fictional roofing and electrical demos from the public portfolio instead of presenting them as evidence of client delivery.

The portfolio now leads with Madina’s WE ARE MK STUDIO, JD Studio Works and JDMEET Music, alongside KVADRAT, Growth Scan, Verb Lab, jdmeet camelot and Pick a Drive. Kāla and SAI Cold Brew remain separately disclosed creative concepts, not commissioned hotel or beverage clients. The distinction is part of the evidence, not a footnote that permits invented results.

• Inspect our real websites, apps and labelled concepts

The homepage journey is not a substitute for the destination.

Northbound, our current homepage, uses a cinematic metro journey and a phone-like interface. That presentation expresses the studio’s identity. It does not mean that someone arriving at a service or article URL should have to replay the homepage before reading what they requested.

The October release restored direct service and article entry, ordinary navigation links and complete article and portfolio content in the initial HTML response. The same content is available in a no-JavaScript reading view. This lets the interactive presentation coexist with explicit addresses and inspectable content; it does not establish that every visitor prefers the visual direction or that every search engine will index every page.

• The redesign and Ads landing-page services have different content, metadata and resource links; they no longer collapse into one generic service destination.
• Portfolio entries include project descriptions and website or App Store destinations in ordinary HTML, not only after a carousel interaction.
• Articles retain their addresses, original publication dates, complete text, tables and sources when opened directly or from the journal.
• Contextual resources connect evaluation with an appropriate service or enquiry path. A visitor can inspect the brief without registering.

• Read the redesign brief and use its editable worksheet

Discovery checks and Google’s index are separate evidence.

The domain is verified in Search Console. The public sitemap lists the current index targets, while intentionally retired trade-acquisition articles return a removal response and do not appear in the current journal, sitemap or feed. Relevant existing service and article URLs were retained rather than replaced by new keyword variants.

Our October 15 release checks confirmed that current sitemap pages were reachable through ordinary initial-HTML links and returned their intended canonical and indexing directives. Google’s stored index records can still reflect an earlier crawl. A successful live test or accepted indexing request is not a confirmed normal recrawl, an indexed result or an improved position.

• Check a page’s HTTP status, canonical, indexing directives and content together; a 200 response alone is insufficient.
• Inspect the requested article or service content, not just a working homepage or an app launcher.
• Test the links people use as well as sitemap inclusion, and preserve useful destinations when changing navigation.
• Record live-test results and stored crawl dates separately. Do not report one as the other.

A release record that another team can use.

For this rebuild we separated presentation, content and release acceptance. A version could look finished while still failing a direct-entry or migration check. The following record makes that distinction explicit without turning a technical pass into a commercial success claim.

Historical August baseline—not an October result.

The original August record is retained for transparency. As observed on August 14, 2026, the completed July 25–August 12 Search Console window reported 128 impressions, 1 click, 0.8% CTR and an average position of 69.2 across the domain. These figures describe the earlier website, not the current redesign or a result produced by it.

In the equal seven-day comparison, August 6–12 produced 60 impressions versus 52 during July 30–August 5. Average position moved from 65.8 to 74.0 and clicks from one to zero. That is broader recorded exposure with weaker average placement, not a ranking win or evidence of its cause. These historical periods cannot be compared directly with a differently sized October reporting window.

What we will and will not claim.

The verified result is a published rebuild with inspectable projects, distinct service destinations and accessible article content. First-page commercial rankings, increased qualified enquiries and revenue gains remain unproven. A visual redesign cannot manufacture demand or substitute for an offer, credible evidence and reliable follow-up.

The next measurement needs equal complete search periods, relevant queries and countries, and production analytics that exclude internal tests and unrelated traffic. An enquiry must be reconciled with its actual destination before it is called delivered, and qualification must come from the business rather than a button click. Growth Scan can help identify technical questions; it is not a full crawl, a Search Console report or a measurement of sales outcomes.

• Use Growth Scan as a starting diagnostic

Sources

• Google Search Central — Creating helpful, reliable content
• Google Search Central — Sitemap overview
• Google Search Console — How impressions, clicks and position are counted
• Google Search Central — JavaScript SEO basics
• Google Search Central — Crawlable link best practices