Back to "Examples"

MyAlarm Security

MyAlarm Security is a family-run home and business security company based in Sidcup, right on the borders of London and Kent. Matt does the installs and servicing - burglar alarms (wired and wireless, app-controlled), CCTV systems with remote viewing, access control, door entry, and ongoing maintenance - and Rachel handles the business side. Between them they've been in the industry for over 27 years, covering Bexley, Bromley, Orpington, Dartford, Greenwich, and most of the surrounding area.

The MyAlarm Security website homepage, decked out in a Christmassy theme for the holidays.

How this came about

Rachel and I go back about ten years, through Bouncy Castle Network - the leisure hire platform I was lead developer of for a decade before moving to Bandcamp. She was a client there, and when I left to start Chobble she was one of the first people to get in touch. In her own words:

"Have known Stefan for about 10 years when I signed up to a large web developer he worked for, who hosted websites in the industry I was in. When Stef left this company, it was very noticeable. He is the goat! There isn't anything website related, Google related, hosting related, email related, seo related that he doesn't know! When I found out he was doing his own thing, I jumped ship straight away and had him rebuild me a brand new website from scratch - exactly to my liking. There was nothing he couldn't do. I wasn't restricted to certain designs, layouts or templates. It was a 100% custom build with his input, knowledge and recommendations along the way. There isn't anything he doesn't know or can't do. My website was built pretty quick and tweaks done before it went live. Stefan has been responsive and provided lots of guidance for all sorts of issues I've had (including my iPhone settings when sorting the emails on my phone). The handover and support has been brilliant. Stefan knows his stuff. I honestly couldn't recommend him enough."

Rachel, MyAlarm Security

The old site was a PHP template from a web design agency - it looked broadly how Rachel wanted, but the template was rigid in the wrong places. She couldn't remove built-in elements she didn't need, couldn't display reviews where she actually wanted them, and the product and category page layouts were the agency's defaults rather than hers.

What I built

The site is built on the Chobble Template, which provides the underlying infrastructure - the build system, image pipeline, CDN hosting, and SEO foundation. But the template is designed to be fully overridable, and what MyAlarm Security's visitors see is all Rachel's. The design is deliberately close to the old site - Rachel liked how it looked, she just needed to be able to do more with it. I rebuilt it to her specifications, including the sliding homepage banner and the product and category page layouts, so the change was invisible to customers but the control was entirely hers. The screenshot shows the site with a seasonal Christmas theme.

Like the old site, this one has location-specific pages for the areas the business covers - Bexley, Orpington, Sidcup, and so on. The difference is that Rachel can now edit them herself through PagesCMS, and we've worked together on making each one genuinely useful rather than just a thin service-and-postcode list.

The full source code is on GitHub, which means Rachel owns the site outright and can take it to any developer or host at any point. It's the same deal as the security equipment the business installs - you own the gear from day one, and it keeps working regardless of what happens to whoever fitted it.

Technical details

The site is built with Eleventy, hosted on Bunny.net's global CDN. Pre-rendered static pages mean there's no server to maintain, no database to back up, and nothing for a hacker to get into through an outdated plugin - which is a reasonably embarrassing situation for a security company to find itself in. Page weight is kept down by the Chobble Template's automatic image resizing and format conversion, which helps on mobile where a fair proportion of security enquiries probably land.

Results

According to Google Search Console, the new site has seen an average improvement of around 10 positions in search rankings across the terms MyAlarm Security targets, with more visitors and impressions than the old site managed.

Get in touch

If you run a local trade or service business and want a website that's properly yours - fast-loading, owned outright, and built to your exact spec - fill in the form below.

By · ·