ClippaNet manufactures and sells net clipping machinery — a niche, technical product with a very specific global customer base. When Matt Thacker, the director of MATS Ltd and ClippaNet, came to me, he had already seen me build the MATS Ltd website from scratch. He was happy enough with the result that he asked me to do the same for ClippaNet.
What followed was a full rebuild: not just a visual refresh, but a rethink of the messaging, structure, and conversion path from the ground up.
Where the old site was losing people
The product was never the problem. The machinery does something specific and does it well, and the business had years of customers to prove it. The website simply wasn't communicating any of that.
Someone landing on the old homepage couldn't tell within a few seconds what ClippaNet made or who it was for. The layout had been designed for a desktop screen and squeezed down for phones afterwards, which is a real problem when your buyers are spread across Europe and the US and are as likely to open a link on a phone as at a desk. There was no obvious next step for someone who was interested. And unoptimised images made the pages heavier than they needed to be, which hurts both patience and rankings.
Starting with one sentence
The first job on a rebuild like this isn't design. It's deciding what the homepage says before anyone scrolls.
For a technical product, the temptation is to lead with specification. It's the thing the business knows best. But a specification only helps someone who has already established they're in the right place. So the new homepage opens with a plain statement of what ClippaNet makes and who buys it, and the detail follows underneath for the people who want it.
That single decision changes what the rest of the site has to do. Once the homepage qualifies the visitor, the product pages can be genuinely technical without losing anyone.
The rule I always follow: if you can't explain what a business does in one sentence on the homepage, the site isn't doing its job yet.
Mobile first, for a global buyer
The rebuild was designed for a small screen first and scaled up, rather than the other way around. That sounds like a technical detail; it's really a content decision. Designing narrow forces you to decide what matters most on each page, because you cannot put three things side by side and hope the visitor picks one.
For an exporter it also has a practical edge. Buyers browsing on mobile networks, in different countries, at times when nobody is in the office, need pages that load quickly and read cleanly without pinching and zooming. Every image was optimised, the code was kept lean, and the site was built custom — no page builder, no framework loading features the site doesn't use.
Making the next step obvious
The old site had no clear route from interest to enquiry. The new one has a prominent quote button above the fold, contact details that are easy to find on any device, and a form short enough to complete on a phone.
For a considered B2B purchase, the enquiry form isn't the finish line — it's the start of a conversation that might run for weeks. That's an argument for asking less, not more. Name, contact, and a sentence about the application is enough to get the right conversation started; qualifying can happen in the reply.
What I'd take from this one
- Clarity beats polish. The biggest gain came from saying plainly what the business does, not from the visual design.
- Technical products still need a plain-English door. Lead with the what and who; put the specification one level down.
- Mobile-first is a content discipline. Designing narrow forces you to prioritise.
- Short forms suit long sales cycles. Ask for what you need to reply, not what you need to quote.
The result
Matt's feedback was straightforward: the site reflects the business properly now. The messaging is clear, it works on every device, and the enquiry path is obvious. The rebuild took two weeks, and the working relationship carried on from there — MATS Ltd first, ClippaNet second, both built from scratch.
Read the full case study for the complete breakdown of the rebuild, including the brief, the timeline and the client's own words.
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