From 18-Second Load Times to a Growth-Ready Website

The Client: 

Acorel — a French company and market leader in measuring and predicting real-time visitor flows for public transport, airports, and public spaces, using automatic people-counting sensors and machine learning. 37+ years on the market.

The Problem: a Website That Wasn’t Selling

Despite nearly 40 years of market experience and a strong reputation, Acorel’s website reflected neither the company’s scale nor the value of its product. A full UX/UI and SEO audit revealed the following “before” state:

Technical issues

SEO score: 67 out of 100 (average for top 100 sites: 74), with 19 critical issues.

Mobile performance: 23 out of 100 (Google PageSpeed); desktop performance: 44 out of 100.

Largest Contentful Paint on mobile: 18.3 seconds, versus a recommended 2.5s.

Page response time: 2.36s (recommended: under 0.4s); full page load reached up to 18 seconds. The site loaded 15 CSS files and 29 JS files with no minification or gzip compression, and lacked HTTP/2 and HSTS.

Product and content issues

• The homepage failed to communicate the product’s value: a typical visit covered only 2–3 screens, with no case studies or project numbers — just generic blocks like “News” and “LinkedIn.”
• Navigation was confusing: “Products,” “Services,” and “Solutions” existed as separate, disconnected sections, and there was no “Cases/Projects” section at all — despite this being exactly what B2B visitors needed to build trust.
• The English version was a literal, word-for-word translation of the French site — some phrases weren’t even translated.
• There were UX bugs: the French word “Fermer” (“Close”) appeared in the English-language inquiry form’s confirmation pop-up, and the form itself was slow to load.
• The design looked dated: graphics, fonts, and infographics didn’t match the company’s status as a market leader.

SEO state

• Practically no organic traffic: 275 visitors per month, 100% from France.
• Domain Rating of just 18 out of 100 (a competitor of the same company age had a DR of 57).
• Ranking for only 47 keywords, none in the top 3 of Google search results.
• No structured keyword, meta-tag, or URL work at all — despite the domain being indexed by Google for 20 years.

What We Did

1. Positioning and information architecture

We analyzed competitors (INIT, Xovis, Webreathe) and the market landscape, then reframed the site’s core messaging so visitors would understand the product’s value within the first few screens. We redesigned the site architecture and navigation logic — removing the artificial split between “Solutions / Software / Domains” and adding a dedicated Cases/Projects section.

2. Design

We prepared wireframes and briefs for the designer and managed the design process end to end — from initial concepts to final screens — with a focus on modern visuals, clear proof points (years on the market, client numbers, precision metrics), and product-focused imagery.

Examples: https://u6w9n.draftium.site/ 

3. Development and WordPress build

We managed the process of turning the design into a working WordPress site, oversaw code quality, and eliminated the technical causes of slow load times.

4. Technical SEO and localization

• Replaced the literal translation with a fully optimized, standalone English version of the site.
• Set up correct hreflang structure for both languages.
• Rewrote meta descriptions, titles, and URL structure aligned with target keywords.

Example:

5. Live chat

In the final stage, we added a live chat tool that helps Acorel’s sales team respond to and process inbound inquiries from the website faster.

Results: the “After” State

The main focus of this phase is technical and UX performance (traffic and lead impact will be measured separately once enough post-launch data has accumulated).

• Site speed moved into the “green zone” for Core Web Vitals (per Google PageSpeed Insights) — up from critically low scores of 23–44 to a good rating of 90+.

• UX bugs that confused users are gone (language errors in forms, slow inquiry submission).
• Clear, logical navigation is in place, including a dedicated Cases/Projects section — exactly what was missing for building B2B trust.
• A fully localized bilingual site (FR/EN) with correct SEO markup for each language, replacing the previous literal translation.
• The technical SEO foundation is fixed: meta tags, URLs, and page structure are now in place for the site to grow organic traffic — something the previous technical debt made impossible.
• A live chat on the site gives Acorel’s team a tool to process inbound inquiries faster.

Conclusion

Acorel had a product and a reputation built over 37+ years, but the website reflected none of it — not in speed, not in structure, not in messaging.

We ran the full cycle — audit, positioning, design management, development, technical SEO, and live chat — and turned the site from a technically outdated liability into a fast, clear, growth-ready platform.

At Go Global we are on a mission to make businesses effective in reaching business expansion targets.

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