The situation.
Daniel has been running Artistic Solutions out of Oceanside for two and a half decades. 97 Google reviews. 5.0 stars. Real customers, real names, neighborhoods we know — Olde Oceanside, La Costa, Carlsbad Village. The business worked because the work was good and the calls came from referrals.
The website didn't reflect any of that. Built years ago by a developer named Nick on a Weebly template, it looked like every other contractor site you've ever closed without calling. The phone number was buried. The service area was a one-line footer. Tom Dixson's review — by far the most powerful piece of social proof Daniel owns — was nowhere on the homepage.
Worse: the site was hosted on a tracking number that wasn't even Daniel's anymore. The Google Business Profile was owned by an old gmail account. Any homeowner who searched "tree service Oceanside" and found Daniel was self-selecting against the actual quality of the business. Six months of GBP data showed the impact:
Daniel didn't have a website problem. He had a website-as-conversion-killer problem.
What we built.
We rebuilt the site in 48 hours. Phone number above the fold, click-to-call on every page. Service area mapped to the eight NCSD cities Daniel actually drives to. Tom Dixson's review elevated to the homepage. License + insurance verified and badged. A real photo of Daniel's crew on the homepage instead of stock palms.
Then we put it on Maps Growth — Google Business Profile management, citation cleanup across the 12 directories that had Daniel's old phone, monthly content updates, and review-request automation to his last 5 customers.
(Before / After)
The old site.
- Phone number in the footer, not clickable on mobile
- Service area unclear ("San Diego County")
- 97 reviews mentioned in passing, not featured
- No license or insurance proof on the page
- Stock palm trees instead of real jobsite photos
- Lighthouse mobile performance: 41/100
The new site.
- Click-to-call phone in nav + hero + every section
- NCSD service area mapped to 8 specific cities
- Tom Dixson's review featured above the fold, name + neighborhood
- CSLB license + insurance badge, links verified
- Real photos of Daniel's crew + jobsites
- Lighthouse mobile performance: 92+ (rebuilt on Roscoe Site Pro chassis)
Specific tactical decisions we made:
Click-to-call visibility. The phone number is the first thing in the hero, the first thing in the mobile nav, and repeats at the bottom of every page. Click-to-call works on every device.
Service area clarity. Eight NCSD cities listed explicitly. Each city links to a service-area page so homeowners know they're served before they call.
Review prominence. Five real reviews — Tom Dixson, James Bastin, Maxine Miller, Lisa Ferguson, Pamela Galbraith Degen — surface on the homepage with first name + neighborhood + the actual review excerpt.
What changes.
The site went live in early May. Maps Growth started the same week. Day-30 results publish on this page June 11, 2026 — call-volume delta against the 6-month baseline (1.5 calls/month from the old site), Google Business Profile view delta against 225/month baseline, and ranking moves on the trade × city keywords we track in BrightLocal weekly.
We chose to publish this case study before the data landed. Most agencies wait for the win, then write the success story. We are publishing the work, the bet, and the math — then publishing the result. If the bet does not pay, you will read about that too.
The Founders 10 frame.
Daniel signed up for Founders 10 because the math worked: $499 build + $399/mo Maps Growth, locked for 24 months. The first 30 days will show whether the rebuild moves the numbers — and we will publish the result either way on June 11, 2026.
What he locked in: the $399 grandfathered Maps Growth rate (new founders pay $599), quarterly strategy calls with Carlos, direct text-line for changes, and a Founders 10 badge for his site. We featured Daniel as Founder #1 because he was first — not because the data is in yet.