The Initiative
This is a self-directed project, as much a way to show how I work as a way to give something back. After more than a decade living in the UK, I wanted to put that to use for British businesses, and Made in Britain felt like the right place to begin.
The plan is straightforward: take one company from each category in the Made in Britain directory and rebuild what is holding it back, starting with Agriculture. Working through that first category is what led me to Hay Bar — a considered choice, not a name pulled at random.
Hay Bar is a genuinely good product: the original floor-level hay feeder, designed in 2004 by a horsewoman to help a mare recover, made in Britain and sold to owners across Europe, the USA and South Africa. The problem was never the product. It was the website.
The task was simple to state and harder to do: find the site that most needed rebuilding, prove the case, and then actually build it.
The Core Problem
No Way to Buy
The site was a brochure. No prices, no basket, no checkout. To order, a customer had to phone or email, and every overseas enquiry was quoted by hand. For a product with international demand, that is the clearest revenue leak there is.
An Unfinished DIY Template
Built on a drag-and-drop builder, with default placeholder pages still live in the navigation. It looked half-finished because it was, and that undercut the credibility of a serious 20-year-old manufacturer.
Invisible in Search
Four H1 tags on one page, headings written as brand slogans rather than the terms buyers actually search, and no structured data at all. The site ranked for its own name and little else.
Weak Image SEO & Accessibility
Around 70% of images carried no alt text, and the homepage showed no product images or pricing at all. Search engines and screen readers were both left guessing.
Losing Sales to Its Own Resellers
Established country retailers stock the Hay Bar on modern stores, with prices and customer reviews. The manufacturer's own site could not take an order, so the branded, ready-to-buy demand was handed straight to the middlemen.
Strategic Positioning
The wedge was clear:
Shift from "a brochure its resellers outsell" to "the original Hay Bar, bought direct from the maker."
A reseller can stock the product. It can never own the inventor, the 2004 origin, or the twenty-year track record. That authenticity became the spine of the rebuild, backed by direct e-commerce, a proper product story, and search-led content.
The strategy was decided before a single line of the new page was written.
The Process
Ten steps, in the order they happened. This is the part I most wanted to show: not a finished page appearing from nowhere, but the working method behind it, including where things broke and how they were put right.
01Audit
Scored the shortlisted Made in Britain sites on the things that justify a rebuild, and picked the strongest case.
02Verify
Inspected the live Hay Bar site at the code level, confirming the builder, the missing shop, and the unfinished pages.
03SEO
Audited the on-page SEO: the four H1s, the slogan headings, the over-length tags, and the absent schema.
04Competitor
Profiled a reseller and found the key insight: it sells Hay Bar's own product, with a price and reviews, while the maker cannot.
05Copy
Wrote the homepage section by section, each block justified by a finding rather than a hunch.
06Design
Built a grounded, tactile identity in deep barn-green, deliberately against the equestrian cliché, with e-commerce and full schema baked in.
07Polish
Fixed accessibility by construction: contrast, focus states, tap targets, lazy-loaded images, and a corrected phone link.
08Audit
Scored the build, took an honest 17/20, then closed the gaps to a clean 20/20.
09Adapt
Fixed the responsive layout so the benefits grid resolves cleanly across every screen size.
10Publish
Shipped a self-contained homepage, solving a hosting snag along the way so every image renders reliably.
Before & After
The Current Site
The Rebuild
Built responsive from the start — the rebuild adapts cleanly from desktop down to mobile.
What Changed the Most
Sell Direct
A real shop with prices and a basket, so the maker captures the branded demand that resellers were quietly absorbing.
Be Found
A single keyword-led H1, headings built around real search terms, an FAQ, and full structured data, so the brand can rank for more than its own name.
Be Trusted
The founder's story front and centre, plus real reviews from a veterinary surgeon and an international event rider, the proof a reseller can never replicate.
What This Project Demonstrates
This case study reflects how Marghella Marketing approaches a rebuild. We don't just make a site look better. We find where the business is losing money and attention, decide the positioning, and design for the way people actually search and buy.
The result is not simply a smarter-looking homepage. It is a manufacturer that can finally sell directly and be found.
Why This Matters for Local Makers
Plenty of British manufacturers have a genuinely strong product and a website that quietly undersells it, and hands its customers to resellers. A site should reflect the quality of the thing it sells, and let people buy it.
Run a British business?
This project is part of a wider give-back to Made in Britain members. If your site is holding you back, let's talk about putting it right.
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