Project information
- Category: Website Redesign & Migration
- Client: Lockfast Hereford Ltd
- Industry: 24-hour locksmiths, Herefordshire & surrounding areas, since 2005
- Project date: October 2026
- Project URL: lockfasthereford.co.uk
The brief
Most people who find a locksmith online are stressed. They're locked out, they've been broken into, or they need the locks changed today. They want one thing: to get a trustworthy local locksmith on the phone, fast.
The old Lockfast site was built from a template and hosted on Netlify. It worked, but it had grown untidy over the years and wasn't making it as easy as it could to call.
What wasn't working
The old site had five problems to fix before it could do its job properly.
- The enquiry form asked for the wrong things. It wanted a first name, a surname and an email address, but the phone number was optional. That's the opposite of what a locksmith needs.
- The code had become heavy. Two copies of Bootstrap were loading, along with a stylesheet of more than 11,000 lines and several leftover scripts.
- Some pages were broken. One page had a duplicated section and a footer in the wrong place, two had broken HTML, and some placeholder text from the template was still showing.
- Every page competed for the same searches. The pages had near-identical titles, so Google had no clear reason to show one page over another.
- The hosting depended on Netlify's form handling. Moving away from it meant the contact form had to be rebuilt properly.
What I built
Every change was made with one goal: get a worried customer talking to Mark as quickly as possible.
A site that puts the phone number first
I rebuilt all eight pages on a clean, modern Bootstrap 5.3 design in Lockfast's navy and red. The 24-hour number appears on every page, and on phones a call bar stays fixed to the bottom of the screen, so a customer is always one tap away from calling Mark.
Desktop and phone. The call bar stays on screen on phones.
A contact form built around how a locksmith works
The new "Request a callback" form asks for what's actually needed: name, phone number, postcode, which service, and how urgent it is (Emergency – now, Within a few days or Just a quote). Email and the job address are optional.
If anything goes wrong while sending, the visitor doesn't get a dead end. They get a large Call now button.
Branded emails for both sides
For the owner: each enquiry arrives with a colour-coded urgency banner, and the subject line reads like 🔴 EMERGENCY – Locked out – HR1 2AB – Jane Smith. That makes it easy to triage from a phone. There are one-tap buttons to call or reply, and the job address opens straight in Google Maps.
For the customer: a confirmation email in the same style as the website, with a copy of their enquiry and the 24-hour number in case they can't wait.
Emails shown use made-up sample details. Click an email to see it in full.
Each page has its own search target
Each page now has a clear job of its own: lockouts and lost keys, lock repair and replacement, break-in repairs, insurance-approved upgrades, and "local Hereford locksmith". Every page has a unique title, description and main heading, so the pages no longer compete with each other in search results.
Spam protection without the puzzles
The old reCAPTCHA has been replaced with Cloudflare Turnstile, which most visitors never notice. Behind it are several more quiet checks: a hidden trap field, a minimum fill-in time and a per-visitor limit. Real customers don't see any of it, and spam is stopped.
Privacy by design
Enquiries are emailed to the business and not stored on the website, so there's no customer database to leak. The emails are sent through the business's own authenticated mailbox, so they reliably reach the inbox instead of the spam folder.
Moved to New Cloud Hosting
I moved the site from Netlify to New Cloud Hosting, deployed straight from Git, with HTTPS enforced and the business's existing email left completely untouched. There was no disruption to the phone or the inbox.
Built to keep working
A small-business website should keep working without anyone watching it. Every future change is tested before it goes live.
140+ automated tests
Run before every change goes live.
Desktop & phone
Every page is opened at both sizes.
Links, images & numbers
Every link, image and phone number is checked.
Real form, practice inbox
Test enquiries cover successful sends, spam attempts, missing details and a failed mailbox login.
The shared header, menu and footer are edited in one place and applied to every page automatically, so the site stays consistent as it grows.
The result
The site is faster and tidier, easier to find in search, and designed around the moment a customer needs a locksmith. Every page leads to a phone call, and every enquiry arrives clearly marked so the owner can act on it straight away.
- Bootstrap 5.3
- HTML5
- Cloudflare Turnstile
- Branded HTML Email
- Page-by-page SEO
- New Cloud Hosting
- Git Deployment
- Automated Testing
Has your website grown untidy?
If your site isn't bringing in enquiries, I'll take a look and tell you what's holding it back. See more of my web design and website maintenance work, or browse the rest of the portfolio.