A few specific fixes for bobbetts.co.uk
Bobbetts Mackan Solicitors · Bristol · website rebuild
I rebuild small-business sites in my spare time when I can see they are leaving conversions on the table. The bobbetts.co.uk site has the substance of the firm behind it (Legal 500 Band 1 criminal defence, Chambers Band 1, 150 years on the Bristol register, the 24hr helpline, Tony Miles and Sally Mitchell named on the people page), and a front end last touched around 2008. Three findings below, then a working rebuild you can click through.
See the live rebuild ›A working preview you can click through · opens in this tab
The site is served over http only, and on https the certificate is misconfigured.
What I saw
bobbetts.co.uk currently resolves only on http://www.bobbetts.co.uk/. Loading https://www.bobbetts.co.uk/ returns an SSL certificate name-mismatch error in Chrome, Firefox and Safari (ERR_TLS_CERT_ALTNAME_INVALID). Chrome additionally flags the http page as "Not Secure" in the address bar. A duty client receiving an SMS link to the firm from their solicitor at 2am sees a browser warning page before any Bobbetts Mackan content, and is one swipe away from closing the tab.
What the rebuild does about it
Day one of the rebuild: a fresh Let's Encrypt certificate on Vercel, auto-renewed indefinitely. https://bobbetts.co.uk and https://www.bobbetts.co.uk both serve the new build with a green padlock. http requests are 301-redirected to the https equivalent. The certificate never lapses again because Vercel issues a new one thirty days before expiry, automatically, for the lifetime of the project.
TLS handshake on bobbetts.co.uk · cert name mismatch → valid Let's Encrypt, auto-renewed
The page paths still read /cms/section/bmk_aboutus.html, and the markup is HTML 4.01 Strict.
What I saw
View source on the homepage and the doctype is HTML 4.01 Strict, the charset is iso-8859-1, the layout is built from /cms/section/ paths that look untouched since around 2008, and there is no <meta name="viewport"> tag. Mobile Safari renders the desktop layout zoomed out, so the 24hr helpline 0117 929 8987 lands at about eight-point type on an iPhone. Ten script tags load synchronously in <head> (presentation1.js, help.js, quotes.js, date.js, domextension.js, filesearchhover.js, two rss tickers, two FLRelease scripts) before any of the Bobbetts content paints. The pre-2012 Google Analytics urchinTracker call is still on the page; the urchin endpoint has not reported since 2012.
What the rebuild does about it
The rebuild ships as a static Astro site: one mobile-first single-column layout, a viewport meta tag, modern image formats (jpeg q=78, webp where it helps), no blocking scripts in head, no legacy CMS path structure. URLs become /, /criminal-defence, /family-children, /people, /visit. Old /cms/section/* paths get 301 redirects in vercel.json so any incoming Crown Court or Magistrates link still resolves.
Markup · HTML 4.01 Strict, iso-8859-1, no viewport tag → HTML5, UTF-8, mobile-first
The 24-hour criminal defence helpline is the most important number on the site, and it lives in a sidebar callout.
What I saw
The "Police Station 24 Hour Helpline 0117 929 8987" line sits inside the right-rail "Your Personal Lawyers" callout, below the fold on every viewport I tested. The number appears in the page footer as well, in small text alongside the VAT registration and the SRA reference. On the mobile rendering it ends up roughly two-thirds of the way down a long single column, after the no-fault-divorce explainer, the Courts Martial substory, the Legal Aid substory and the Family substory. The number that should be tappable in the first viewport is buried.
What the rebuild does about it
The rebuild pins the helpline as the first trust element below the hero, with a tel: link, a brief explanation that the line is staffed by accredited duty solicitors, and a separate styling treatment so it cannot be mistaken for body copy. On mobile it lives in the sticky utility bar at the top of the page so a panicked caller never has to scroll to find it.
Helpline 0117 929 8987 · sidebar callout below fold → pinned trust feature, first screen, tel: tappable
Pricing
No retainer. No contract. No in-person visits, fully remote from Switzerland.
- One round of revisions before launch
- DNS cutover handled (you keep the domain in your name)
- 30 days of post-launch tweaks at no extra cost
- Source code handed over on day 60 (you own everything)
If the proposal lands, reply with two or three 20-minute slots in the next ten days for a video call. I take on three Bristol builds this quarter, and first confirmed wins the slot. If I do not hear back by 28 May 2026, the proposal site comes down.