The brief: keep the site, fix what is underneath
Carey Events hires out magic mirrors, photo booths, selfie pods, audio guest books and light-up love letters for weddings and parties across Preston and Lancashire. The site did its job on looks. What it was not was fast: an older WordPress install, slow on phones, with a broken logo and tracking code left running long after it stopped doing anything. So we took it over rather than replacing it, and moved it and his email onto our hosting in September 2026.
What we actually did
Nothing clever, all of it overdue:
- Fixed the broken header logo - the site was storing its own address as http, so browsers blocked it.
- Removed dead Google tracking - an analytics tag Google switched off in July 2023 was still loading on every page, twice.
- Turned on caching and compression - the homepage went from 63 stylesheets and 46 scripts to 1 and 8.
- Switched off ten unused plugins, deactivated rather than deleted so any of them can come back in seconds.
- Removed a redirect that sent every mobile visitor through an extra hop to a mobile homepage that no longer existed.
- Re-saved the photos properly - the homepage header alone went from 714KB to 102KB with no visible difference, and every image now has a modern WebP version.
- Fixed broken images and dead links that Google was still sending people to.
Then the part the owner could see: new product pages and a prices page, built on the existing design.
Four screens that tell the story
Measured, not claimed
Both measurements are from Google's own PageSpeed API, on the homepage: the first on 21 August 2026 on the old host, before we touched anything, and the second on 27 September 2026. Page weight fell from 2,688KB to 783KB, and desktop performance went from 84 to 99. Best practices went from 73 to 96, and on a mobile test the main content now appears in 6.5 seconds instead of 17.8.
Mobile performance went from 61 to 70. That is the honest number rather than the best one - mobile scores swing by ten points or more between runs, and we quote the lower. The theme itself dates from 2018 and sets a ceiling on phones; we told the owner that rather than promise a score. Test it yourself, or run your own site through our free website check.
Why this matters if your site already looks fine
Because most slow small-business sites do not need a redesign - they need someone to look after what is already there. That is what our £29.99-a-month plan is for: hosting, updates, fixes and edits, on a site you keep. Tell us about yours.
Website takeovers: the questions we get asked
Can you take over a WordPress site another company built?
Yes - that is exactly what this was. We move the site and email onto our hosting, fix what is broken on the way in, and look after it from then on for £29.99 a month, with the migration done at no charge. If the site is sound, like this one, we can keep the design you have. If it is not, we will say so and rebuild it properly for the same monthly fee. More on how takeovers work is on our hosting page.
Will moving my website to new hosting change how it looks?
Not unless you want it to. Here the design was kept exactly as it was; the changes were underneath - caching, compression, lighter images, unused plugins switched off - plus fixes to things that were visibly broken, like the logo. The owner was told about every change a visitor would notice.
Do you work with businesses in Preston?
Yes. Carey Events is a Preston business, and everything from the first audit to the new product pages was done over WhatsApp and email. Our Preston page covers pricing and how we work with businesses there.