Case study 01
MJH Construction
A 30-year Eastern-Shore builder whose homepage scored 59 on Google's mobile speed test. We rebuilt it to arrive in a fraction of the bytes, to actually ask for the job — and, as you scroll, to raise one of their own houses from block to finished kitchen.
- Sector
- Residential construction & siding
- Location
- Easton, Maryland
- Shipped
- 2026
- Scope
- Full rebuild
The site they came to us with
A good business behind a slow front door
MJH Construction is exactly the kind of business a good website should make shine: licensed since 1989, certified, insured, with thirty years of work across Maryland's Eastern Shore. Their old site didn't say any of that quickly enough to matter — on Google's mobile speed test it scored 59 out of 100, in the orange band Google labels “needs improvement” — a 5.3-megabyte page whose hero slide alone weighed 1.4 MB.
The page was a heavyweight template carrying weight it didn't need: a giant logo watermark dropped over the hero photo, headline text overlapping the building behind it, a loud red “Creative Services” band, walls of testimonial copy, a third-party map embed and a newsletter sign-up — all competing for the same attention. Nowhere did one clear path say “get a quote.”
On a phone it didn't adapt cleanly: content ran past the edge of the screen, and a cookie banner sat on top of the only call to action. The overall impression was “generic contractor template,” when the business behind it is the trusted, three-decade local pro you'd hand your home to.
Scroll the capture → see the original site
The full original homepage — scroll inside the frame
Drag to compare
Same business. New first impression.
Left is the homepage they had. Right is the rebuild. Drag the handle — or tab to it and use the arrow keys.
← Before
After →
On the device that matters most
Most of their visitors are on a phone
On the old site the homepage ran past the edge of the screen and a cookie banner buried the call to action. The rebuild is mobile-first: one clear headline, the phone number a thumb-reach away, and a page that arrives in a fraction of the bytes the old one needed.
Drag the handle on the phone →
The whole thing, side by side
Every section, rethought
Scroll each homepage end to end. Same business, same services — a clearer story and a single path to “get a quote.”
Before
After
The rebuild opens on a preview link — MJH's domain hasn't switched over yet, so mjhconstruction.com still serves the original site. You're comparing the finished rebuild against the site that's still live on their domain.
What we measured
Real numbers, not adjectives
The same homepage, measured before and after. These are genuine readings — no invented stats, ever.
- 98Performance
from 59 · +39 pts
Google score, /100
Performance
Google's overall grade for how fast the page feels to load.
Different bands, not different ends of one: 59 sits in Google's 50–89 “needs improvement” orange, 98 in its 90–100 green. Three of the five runs behind that median came back 98 or better; the two slowest came back 89.
- 96Accessibility
from 80 · +16 pts
Google score, /100
Accessibility
How well the page works with a keyboard and a screen reader.
96/100 means contrast, labels and focus order hold up for real users — not just most of them.
- 100Best Practices
from 96 · +4 pts
Google score, /100
Best Practices
Google's check for security, correctness and modern web standards.
The old site was already good here at 96. A perfect 100 is no console errors, no insecure requests, nothing cut short.
- 92SEO
from 85 · +7 pts
Google score, /100
SEO
How cleanly the page is structured for search engines to read.
A clear page structure and the behind-the-scenes details — the groundwork that lets Google find and rank it.
Measured with Google PageSpeed Insights, mobile, median of five runs, August 2026. Run it yourself against the original and the rebuild.
The rebuild opens on a preview link — MJH's domain hasn't switched over yet, so mjhconstruction.com still serves the original site. You're comparing the finished rebuild against the site that's still live on their domain.
What shipped
Everything every Harbor Tree build includes
- A custom design built around one action — requesting a quote — not a theme with the logo swapped in
- A homepage that builds a house as you scroll: five stages of one real MJH job, from the first course of block to the finished kitchen
- A 98 Google mobile performance score, up from 59 — thirty-nine points on the same test, the same phone profile, the same day, and out of Google's orange band into its green one
- Set up so search engines can read it: a clear page structure and the behind-the-scenes files Google looks for
- A lead path measured in clicks — the phone number lives in the nav, the quote CTA repeats where decisions get made
- Accessibility lifted toward WCAG AA: contrast, keyboard order and screen-reader labels (80 → 96)
- Full ownership — domain, code and content, all in MJH's name from day one
Start a project
Ready for a site that wins the job?
Tell us what you're working with. You'll get a plain-language reply — and if we're not the right fit, we'll say so and point you somewhere good.
Don't like the first design? Take your money back. What it covers
Want the number first? Build an estimate — a minute, and no email needed.
Not ready? Check your Google listing — free, about ten seconds.
Prefer email? contact@theharbortree.com
Tell us what you need
Three fields. Takes about thirty seconds.