If you build websites for a living, your own site should be your best work. That's the theory. In practice, it's often the last thing you get to.
This is the cobbler's shoes problem. And I'll put my hand up, I had it.
The site wasn't broken. It was just stale.
The old HeyPressGo site did what it needed to do. It wasn't embarrassing. But every time I looked at it, something nagged at me. The messaging wasn't quite landing. The layout felt familiar in a bad way. Traffic had been quietly drifting down. And honestly? I was bored looking at it.
That last one matters more than people think. If you're bored by your own website, your visitors feel it too. A site that its owner has stopped believing in is a site that stops converting.
So I pulled the trigger on a full rebuild.
What was actually wrong
Technically, the old site was getting heavy. It had accumulated plugins over the years ? a bit like a kitchen drawer that starts with one good knife and ends up full of stuff you can't identify. It was running on an older version of the Divi framework, which had started to show its age.
But the real problems weren't technical. They were strategic.
The messaging wasn't sharp enough. The services weren't presented clearly. The overall feel was cluttered where it should have been clean. When a website no longer reflects what a business actually does or creates friction in how people understand what's on offer, that's when a redesign earns its keep.
That was us.
Why rebuild instead of patch
I could have kept tweaking. Add a plugin here. Rewrite a headline there. But there's a point where incremental fixes stop working and you need to start fresh.
The new site is built on Divi 5, a significantly more robust framework. Cleaner code, faster performance, better architecture to build on. But more than the tech, I wanted to use the rebuild as a forcing function to rethink everything from the ground up.
This is something I recommend to clients regularly. Your website isn't just a brochure. It's working for you (or against you) every hour of the day. When it stops pulling its weight, a fresh start costs less in the long run than years of band-aid fixes.
What the new site does differently
The rebuild had four clear goals.
First, simpler. The new site strips back the visual noise. More white space, cleaner layout, fewer competing elements. The goal was a site that feels effortless to read rather than one you have to work through.
Second, clearer services. The old site buried what we actually do. The new site surfaces services in a way that makes sense to a business owner not a web developer.
Third, a reason to come back. Here's where it gets interesting. Most web design sites look the same. Seriously scroll through a few and you'll see the same layout blocks, the same stock photos of laptops, the same language about "delivering results." It all blurs together.
We wanted something different. So we introduced Des.
Meet Des, the black cockatoo
Des is our mascot. He's a black cockatoo ? and if you're not familiar with the species, it's worth a look. The glossy black cockatoo is one of the more threatened species in Australia, found in coastal woodlands and open forests along the eastern seaboard. Striking, rare, unmistakable. The kind of bird that makes you stop when you see one.
Having "Des" short for Discovery just felt right for HeyPressGo, as well I can relate to this birds character, having them in the yard as a kid growing up on the south coast of NSW.
Des appears throughout the site doing various things. He's a prop, a character, a bit of personality in an industry that often forgets personality is an option. He'll also be appearing as the featured image across our blog posts, which gives the content a consistent visual thread.
Here's the honest story on Des: he was created using AI. But calling it a five-minute job would be misleading. It took about six hours of craft iterating, shaping, refining until the character was right. That's the part people miss when they talk about AI. The tool is fast. The judgment about what's good takes time, especially with design elements.
What AI actually did (and didn't do) in this build
Speaking of which yes, AI had a role in the rebuild. About 10 per cent of the site involved AI assistance. Mainly in tightening the messaging, refining how we talk to different audiences, and shaping copy that sounds like me / James rather than a committee.
The site itself was handcrafted. The design decisions, the layout choices, the structure all human. AI was the sharpener, not the builder.
That's probably the right ratio for most businesses right now. AI as a tool, not a replacement for thinking.
The real reason to do it
I started this rebuild because I was bored of my own site. I'm ending it with a site I'd actually send someone to.
That shift matters. If you're embarrassed to send someone your website link, that's a problem worth solving.
Your site is working (or not working) right now ? while you're doing other things. If you've been quietly avoiding sending people there, or you've noticed enquiries have gone quiet, or you just can't remember the last time you felt good about it ? that's your signal.
Go look at your homepage on your phone. If you can't tell what your business does in five seconds, we should probably talk.
