---
title: "Before & after — PixelCake"
description: "The problems we find in dated small-business websites, what we replace them with, and the performance targets we build against."
url: "https://pixelcake.se/en/work"
lang: "en"
alternate: "https://pixelcake.se/sv/case"
markdown: "https://pixelcake.se/md/en/work"
llms: "https://pixelcake.se/llms.txt"
---

# What actually changes

Most of the sites we are asked to fix have the same handful of problems. Here is each one, and what replaces it.

## The same business, twice

On the left, the site most small businesses are still running. On the right, what we hand back. Neither is a screenshot — both are built the way we build.

## On a phone

- **Now:** Laid out for a desktop monitor, so visitors pinch and zoom to read a phone number. Most of your traffic is on a phone.

- **After:** Designed for the small screen first, then scaled up. Tap targets you can actually hit, text you can read without zooming.

## Loading time

- **Now:** Eight seconds and a spinner, because the page carries a decade of plugins and uncompressed images.

- **After:** Images sized and modern-format, code split, nothing loaded that is not needed. We aim for a largest paint under 1.5 seconds on mobile.

## Security

- **Now:** No HTTPS, or a CMS and plugins last updated years ago. Browsers now warn visitors before they reach you.

- **After:** HTTPS everywhere, security response headers, current dependencies, and far less surface to attack in the first place.

## Being found

- **Now:** Google has you indexed somewhere, but ask an AI assistant what you do and it either guesses or misses you entirely.

- **After:** Structured data, clean semantic markup, and clear answers to the questions customers actually ask, so search engines and assistants both describe you correctly.

## Making changes

- **Now:** Changing a price means emailing whoever built it in 2014 and waiting. So it never gets changed.

- **After:** You edit text, prices, and images yourself, from a phone if you like, without touching code or waiting on us.

## Everyone can use it

- **Now:** Light gray text on white, forms that cannot be completed with a keyboard, images with no description.

- **After:** Built to WCAG 2.2 AA: readable contrast, full keyboard navigation, and proper labels for screen readers.

## When it goes down

- **Now:** Shared hosting hiccups on a Friday night and nobody notices until Monday, when the calls that never came are already gone.

- **After:** Static-first hosting on a CDN, so there is far less that can fall over, plus a check from outside every minute. If it stops answering, the alert reaches us.

## Knowing your numbers

- **Now:** A cookie banner greets every visitor, and once half of them decline, your analytics only ever sees a fraction of who came by.

- **After:** Privacy-friendly, first-party analytics that need no banner and count everyone, so the numbers you plan around are actually complete.

## The numbers we build against

- **< 1.5s** — Largest paint, on mobile
- **95+** — Lighthouse performance
- **AA** — WCAG 2.2 conformance
- **Days** — To launch, often — not weeks

These are the engineering targets we hold every build to — goals we design for, not averages borrowed from someone else’s project.

## Wondering how yours scores?

Send us your address and we will send back an honest review of what is holding it back. No charge, no pitch deck.

**[Get a free review](https://pixelcake.se/en/review)**