Digital growth with impact: Engels and Hybrid build a performance website

Background

Engels is a well-known provider of refined window and door solutions in wood, aluminium, and PVC. Above all, they focus on quality and aesthetics!

The family business, managed by the third generation since 2007, is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. Today, the Engels group employs approximately 175 people and consists, besides two production facilities (wood in Lokeren and aluminium in Eeklo), of a project market division, a private label department, and a network of 12 Engels stores.

The challenge

The very first challenge was to build a website based on the learnings and achievements of the past year. The successes already achieved and the pre-set targets could not be jeopardized.

Now… we are Hybrid, and for us, it is not about merely maintaining the status quo! By implementing best practices, we will achieve even better results over time.

The second challenge lay in optimizing the various SEO aspects. With Engels’ beautiful photos, the old website quickly reached its limits regarding loading times and mobile friendliness.

It was also crucial to preserve the authority already built, both at the domain level and for specific individual pages, such as regional store pages and product categories like “wooden windows” and “aluminium windows.”

Finally, it was a prime opportunity to realign the information architecture with reality. Are pages present for all relevant search terms? Is the user journey correct? Does each existing page still serve a purpose?

A third aspect, very important for the Engels team, was optimizing the CMS’s user-friendliness. The structure of the old website made it almost impossible to efficiently adjust texts and images or to create a new page. This aspect is crucial when you need a new landing page quickly!

Lastly, there was the challenge of a small rebranding for Engels. The team knew exactly what they wanted: maintain Engels’ recognizability while emphasizing elegance, quality, and simplicity—a piece of cake for our design team, of course!

Why Hybrid Agency?

After seven years of collaboration with their previous digital agency, window and door manufacturer Engels chose Hybrid as a new partner for revenue-driven marketing and lead generation at the beginning of 2020. The ambition was clear: achieve overall growth of +20%.

This challenge only increased when COVID broke out shortly after Batibouw (and just after our start). In a sector that relies on physical sales and showroom visits, we had to rapidly digitize this traditional process due to lockdowns and restrictions. Despite this extra challenge, within one year, we nearly doubled the number of high-quality, sales-accepted leads while halving the cost per lead compared to 2019. Twice as many leads for half the budget! You can read the details of our approach and results here in depth.

After this first successful phase in our partnership, we noticed that further scaling required a rebuild of the existing website. Within the existing setup, A/B testing and SEO optimization had already been maximized. Visually, further adjustments were also impossible. Engels therefore entrusted our team to completely renew the website—a great opportunity to strengthen the partnership and further maximize the results!

The collaboration

Our project manager started by gathering all necessary information to make the project successful. During the first intake meeting with Engels, expectations and requirements were discussed, such as the desired look & feel, choice of template or custom build, scope of the MVP versus the full website, relevant pages, web hosting, budget, and timeline.

Additionally, we analyzed the existing website to identify usability and technical challenges. The marketing, development, and design teams then aligned on functionalities and pages. Technical aspects such as installed plugins, caching, CDN, lazy loading, and compression of CSS, HTML, and images were mapped.

All our findings and recommendations were compiled in a clear project sheet with user stories, mockups, and budget and timeline estimations. After feedback and adjustments, the kick-off was scheduled.

During the kick-off, the entire project was reviewed: tasks, responsibilities, and planning. The project lead at Engels received access to Click-Up, which allowed tasks and deadlines to be managed clearly. Weekly status meetings were scheduled to optimize collaboration and progress among all teams.

The next step was developing the user experience (UX) and user interface (UI). Wireframes were created for key pages, incorporating marketing insights from the start. This clarified how visitors would navigate the site and which flows and content would lead them to conversion. Based on the corporate identity, provided examples, and inspirational references, a first prototype with new colors and typography was created. UI elements were graphically developed in Invision, suitable for both desktop and mobile.

A website, of course, requires the right content. Significant attention was therefore given to content creation. In consultation with Engels and the marketing team, texts and images from the old website were optimized where possible and supplemented with keywords. For new pages, fully new SEO-optimized content was written, including meta titles and descriptions. New images were technically optimized, and a workflow was created to ensure this becomes standard practice in the future.

After design validation, our WordPress experts built the website. A custom page builder was chosen instead of a standard extension to optimize loading speed and usability. Lead-generating tools, such as the budget calculator and style guide, were fully custom-developed and manageable via the admin zone. Important plugins, including Yoast, a redirect plugin, and optimizations for lazy loading, caching, and compression, were installed.

Project monitoring and validation were conducted weekly with Engels, with access to a test environment provided so that all pages could be reviewed and validated. The internal Hybrid team also reviewed the initial version to verify delivery.

Before go-live, a final quality check was performed, testing aspects such as loading speed, compression, browser compatibility, and broken links using tools like SEO-Optimizer and Chrome Lighthouse.

For a complete list of all the to-dos we review and execute, you can download our website delivery checklist via the link below: Website Delivery Checklist

Parallelly, the marketing team handled online marketing, ensuring tracking in Google Tag Manager, adjusting dashboards, and monitoring the impact on ongoing ads. The new layout was rolled out in phases with A/B tests, and a redirect plan was prepared via Google Search Console and AHREFS.

After validation and approval from Engels, the website went live. Post-launch, the website was closely monitored using Analytics, Search Console, and AHREFS. The project concluded with a feedback and sign-off meeting, evaluating both collaboration and the final result.

Results and impact

In October 2021, the website was officially launched. What can we conclude?

Looking at the organic search results in Google Search Console, the website’s position gradually increased in the first two months of 2022 compared to the two months before the launch, with a slight increase in average CTR during the same period. The launch therefore had no negative impact on rankings and remained stable.

Examining the evolution of organic search terms in the top 10 and top 3 shows a clear impact of the new website, with even a doubling or tripling of positions!

For Engels, it was also crucial to maintain or improve website conversion. For example, the “Make an Appointment” conversion ratio increased significantly. Additionally, a new MQL was defined—“Download Brochure”—which also generates clear interest and will contribute to raising the conversion rate over time.

The future

The launch of the new website was not the end point but rather the beginning of the next phase in Engels’ digital transformation. Thanks to the flexible structure and user-friendly CMS, the team can quickly add new pages and campaigns. The technical foundations, from fast loading times to SEO optimizations, ensure future expansions are scalable and sustainable.

Several improvements remain on the roadmap, such as refining lead-generating tools, automating marketing processes, expanding dashboards for more insights into customer behavior and conversions, and integrating new content formats such as video and interactive elements.

For Engels, this means the website not only reflects their brand and expertise today but also forms a solid foundation for future growth. Together, we continue optimizing, experimenting, and leveraging new digital opportunities to maintain and further expand market leadership.

Conclusion

Engels’ website was successfully renewed without impacting existing SEO performance and with a focus on future growth. Thanks to a well-thought-out approach, close collaboration, a custom page builder, and smart optimizations, Engels now has a high-performance, user-friendly, and visually strong website. The results speak for themselves: stable rankings, increasing conversions, and a robust technical foundation allowing the team to act quickly. In short: a successful project with lasting impact.