Project Context
David James Estate Agents is an established, high-traffic UK estate agency with a large and active web presence. The project came in as a rebuild, with the brief to match their existing site structure closely so that content could be carried over and refined, preserving familiarity for both the client and their returning visitors. What became clear early on was that the site was considerably larger and more content-heavy than the initial scoping had captured.
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The Challenge
The project had a deceptively large footprint that only became visible once work was underway:
- Scope underestimated at outset: The initial brief didn't fully account for the volume of pages, content depth, or the breadth of the site's historical archive, including blog content that needed to be carried over accurately.
- Structure-matching requirement: The client needed their existing URL structure and content hierarchy preserved so that existing SEO value, internal links, and user familiarity weren't disrupted by the rebuild.
- High content volume: Migrating a large, established estate agency site means handling not just property listings and service pages, but accumulated editorial content, branch information, team pages, and more, all requiring care, not just a bulk import.
- Performance under traffic: David James is a high-traffic site, the rebuild had to maintain and improve on performance, not just replicate the look, while managing the complexity that volume of content introduces.
- Self-directed delivery: With minimal overhead during the project, I had to make and stand behind my own prioritisation decisions to keep delivery realistic and quality consistent.
The Solution
Early identification of the true project scale was the most valuable thing I did, it changed how everything else was approached:
- Early scope flagging: Caught the full scale of the content and page requirements early in discovery, before it could silently blow out the timeline. Reprioritised workload accordingly and front-loaded the heaviest migration work.
- Systematic content migration: Worked through the full site content methodically, pages, service areas, team structure, and years of historical blog posts, ensuring nothing was lost and the structure landed cleanly.
- Structure-first approach: Built to match the existing URL hierarchy and content organisation, with redirects put in place where needed, preserving SEO equity and giving the client's team a familiar CMS environment post-launch.
- Performance-conscious build: With a high-traffic site, performance wasn't optional, kept a consistent eye on page weight, image handling, and load behaviour throughout the build, not just at the end.
- Autonomous delivery: Took full ownership of sequencing, prioritisation, and quality decisions throughout, the kind of self-directed delivery that keeps a large project moving without constant check-ins.
The Outcome
The site launched as a like-for-like structural rebuild with meaningful improvements under the hood:
- Full content parity: Every page, branch, team member, service area, and historical blog post carried over accurately, nothing lost, nothing broken.
- SEO continuity preserved: Existing URL structures, internal linking, and content hierarchy maintained throughout where possible, protecting years of accumulated search visibility.
- Performant at scale: A high-traffic site that handles its content volume without buckling, rebuilt to last, not just to launch.
- On-time delivery: Despite the scope being larger than initially captured, early identification and proactive reprioritisation meant the timeline stayed realistic and the project didn't drag.
Visual Highlights
