A 30-year carpet cleaner, rebuilt online and recovered in search
Very Dirty Carpet has cleaned Canberra's carpets for more than 30 years. Studio Who rebuilt their tired website, then used the real data to work out why enquiries had dropped.
Very Dirty Carpet has cleaned Canberra's carpets for more than 30 years. Studio Who rebuilt their tired website, then used the real data to work out why enquiries had dropped.
The Brief
Very Dirty Carpet is a family-run carpet and upholstery cleaning business that has served Canberra homes and businesses for more than 30 years. Truck-mounted gear, fixed pricing, strong word of mouth, one of the longest-running operators in the local market. The old website was tired and underperforming, and its online presence had slipped behind newer competitors.
The old site did not reflect three decades of trust, and it was not bringing in enquiries.
Soon after the rebuild went live, enquiries dropped and the owner was worried about cashflow.
The job shifted from build to diagnosis: work out what was actually hurting the site in search, and fix it.
The Website
A feature worth calling out
For a carpet cleaning business, the hardest thing to communicate online is results. You can write "we get carpets clean" on any page. Showing it is different. We built interactive before and after sliders directly into the homepage so visitors can drag the divider and see the actual work. Three real jobs. Three different stain types. Each one showing exactly what 30 years and truck-mounted extraction can do. It builds trust before anyone picks up the phone, and it gives the client a reason to convert that no competitor in Canberra has matched.
The Full Picture
Our Approach
We rebuilt the site to be fast, modern and easy to use on a phone, with clear service pages and fixed-price messaging built to turn visitors into bookings. When enquiries dropped, we didn't guess, we pulled the real numbers straight from Google. Two things stood out: Google was showing the site far less often from mid-May, and the site kept going down, coming back, then going down again. That pointed at the web host, not the rebuild. Every time the site went offline, Google trusted it a little less and showed it to fewer people.
A fast, easy-to-use website with clear service pages, fixed-price messaging, and interactive before and after sliders that let visitors see the real results before they book.
All 13 main pages confirmed showing up properly in Google, old broken links redirected so they did not lose the trust they had already built up, and anything that could get the site penalised by Google removed.
Competitor research mapped the path: suburb pages, more service pages, and a steady review push, leaning into being the most experienced cleaner in town.
The Result
The biggest issue was not the rebuild, it was the web host. The site was going offline often enough that Google stopped showing it as much, which was the likely reason enquiries dropped. What started as a hosting problem turned into a real conversation about revenue, with a clear plan to recover and grow.
All 13 main pages showing up properly in Google
Old broken links fixed, so nothing lost its place in Google
Removed anything that could get the site penalised by Google
A clear plan to outrank local competitors
Some Months Later
A few months after the rebuild, Josh was still leaning hard on Google Ads, roughly $600 a month for a return that barely covered itself. He had not asked for another visual redesign. He wanted the site itself to start earning its keep quietly in the background, without changing how it looked.
Before anything else could be fixed, we found the site was randomly showing the wrong page - service pages showing the contact page, About and Services sometimes showing the blog. Live for who knows how long, and a prime suspect for lost enquiries.
Added the behind-the-scenes information that helps Google understand exactly what the business does, cleaned out old unused add-ons that were slowing things down, fixed page titles so they actually describe what is on each page, added real Google reviews to each service page, and made sure business hours and contact details were complete everywhere on the site.
Traced a sudden drop in the numbers back to Google still catching up on old web addresses from before the rebuild, not any real loss of visibility. Fixed a site map that had stopped updating, and asked Google to take another look at the pages it had missed.
The reporting dashboard looked connected, but it was not actually recording anything on the live site. Got it properly working so visitor and ad data finally gets captured.
Every image compressed to roughly half the file size without losing quality, plus a range of behind-the-scenes security and speed improvements so the site loads faster and is better protected, and kept up to date with how modern search tools find websites.
Vague "Learn more" links rewritten into specific ones, thin service copy enriched, a missing email field added to the quote form, and the nav bar refreshed to match Josh's own footer branding.
The Result
Josh is now getting qualified leads directly through the website. What was a passive, half-broken brochure sitting alongside the ads is now a real source of enquiries in its own right.
Work with us
Whether you need a website, a brand, or a full content suite, we would love to hear what you are building.
