Client case study · Website rebuild · 60 days
A Gainesville sign shop got 175% more quote requests in 60 days.
Cardinal Signs wraps trucks and builds signs for Gainesville businesses, with a perfect five-star record on Google. Its website and ads were working against it. Here’s what changed after the rebuild.
- Client
- Cardinal Signs
- Industry
- Signs, wraps & vehicle graphics
- Market
- Gainesville, FL
- Work
- Website rebuild, Google Ads cleanup
- Live since
- August 13, 2026
+175%
Real quote requests, the 60 days after launch against the 60 days before.
+39%
Calls from the Google profile in the same windows.
+131%
More pages showing up in Google than on the old site.
#1
ChatGPT’s pick for “best sign company in Gainesville FL.”
Local work, with a website and ads aimed everywhere else.
Cardinal Signs has wrapped trucks and built signs in Gainesville for years, and 100% of its Google reviews are five stars. Almost all of the work is local. The marketing wasn’t.
Only 25% of the visitors from its main ad campaign were in Gainesville. Most came from outside the area, led by Atlanta, Miami and Jacksonville, hours from the shop. A broken tracker was logging “conversions” that weren’t leads, so the ad reports looked healthy when they weren’t.
The old WordPress site wasn’t pulling its weight either. In its final 60 days, 99% of its clicks from Google search landed on the home page. The services page showed up in search again and again and never got a single click.
A rebuild, then the ads fixed.
The ads were reined in on August 11. The new site went live August 13.
Research before design
Real search data showed that phrases like “sign company gainesville fl” are barely searched. The traffic is in “near me” searches, won by the Google profile, and in cost questions like how much a vehicle wrap costs. The site was planned around both.
A full rebuild
A fast 20-page site replaced the old WordPress install: nine service pages that each land the right visitor, four cost and permit guides, and 137 shop photos rebuilt into fast, sharp images. Colors were sampled straight from the Cardinal logo.
Built for AI and for everyone
Structured data spells out all nine services, the 14 cities served, hours and location, the facts ChatGPT and Google read. Every template was audited to WCAG 2.2 AA at desktop and phone widths.
Quote requests that land
Every request goes straight to Paul’s inbox and into a customer database for follow-up. A spam filter added four days after launch stopped the bots.
A clean launch, August 13
The domain moved with email untouched and old addresses redirected, so nothing that was already ranking got lost.
Google Ads, cleaned up
Ads were limited to people actually in and around Alachua County, the daily budget was cut 50%, and conversion tracking was rebuilt to count real quote requests, calls and emails instead of the broken tracker.
In Paul’s words.
Paul Randall owns and runs the shop. He recorded this himself, in front of one of the shop’s trailers.
Read the transcript
Hey, my name is Paul Randall. I am the owner and shop manager of Cardinal Signs here in Gainesville. We do a lot of wraps and most of our business is local, and a lot of the searches that we found online were coming from areas that are not here local. And they weren’t populating properly. Many of the landing pages were incorrect. And hired Larry, and he went ahead and rebuilt my whole website and made it AI compatible and ADA compliant and all those new things that are happening today. And I saw a significant increase in traffic through my request page online. So if you’re looking to have something changed and updated, Larry’s the guy to definitely get things going for you. Thanks.
175% more quote requests, on 50% less ad spend.
The 60 days after launch against the 60 days before, back to back. Quote requests were counted by hand from the form records, with spam, bots, tests and sales pitches taken out.
| Result | Change |
|---|---|
| Real quote requests | +175% |
| Calls from the Google profile | +39% |
| Google profile views | +25% |
| Clicks from Google search | +19% |
| Clicks from phones | +68% |
| Pages showing up in Google | +131% |
The gains came with less ad money, not more. The daily ad budget was cut 50% on August 11 and limited to people near the shop. On the search side, the new service pages now pull their own visitors, led by the vehicle wraps page.
Ask ChatGPT for a Gainesville sign shop. It names Cardinal.
When Paul says the site is “AI compatible,” this is what that means. We asked ChatGPT three questions a Gainesville business owner might ask on October 19. It named Cardinal Signs in 100% of its answers, usually first, and quoted the new site’s own pages as its source.
| Question asked | ChatGPT’s answer |
|---|---|
| “best sign company in Gainesville FL” | Named first, “Best overall pick” |
| “truck lettering and business signs near Gainesville FL” | Named first, “Best all-around choice” |
| “who does vehicle wraps in Gainesville Florida” | Listed, with its vehicle wraps page cited |
Accessible to every customer.
ADA lawsuits increasingly target small-business websites. Cardinal’s new site was built to WCAG 2.2 AA, the standard those cases measure against, with keyboard navigation, readable contrast and real text for screen readers.
On October 19 we re-ran the automated accessibility audit across the site at desktop and phone widths: zero errors on every page tested.
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