Humboldt Moving & Storage
A clearer path from planning a move to requesting an estimate.
A custom WordPress experience combining expressive animation, clear regional services, and a guided path to an estimate.
An established business. Several different customer journeys.
My role: Website strategy, content, design, custom animation, WordPress theme and plugin development, technical SEO, estimate routing, and measurement implementation.
The completed website connects service information, regional teams, and estimate requests in one consistent WordPress experience.
Humboldt’s history dates to 1964. Its website serves people planning local, interstate, international, and commercial moves, along with customers who need packing or storage. The right next step depends on both the service and the location.
The original site put office phone numbers, a large header, and promotional imagery ahead of the main message. Its location directory offered a row of city names and phone links. The contact page asked visitors to describe their service in a free-text field. The information was there, but customers had to do much of the sorting themselves.
My website design and redevelopment work focused on three decisions: what help do I need, which team can help, and what should I share to get an estimate?
Stronger performance, measured after launch.
The redesigned homepage scored 97 for mobile performance and 100 for desktop performance in Google PageSpeed Insights, up from 67 and 76 in the original site’s audit. All three checks on each device returned the same scores.
Mobile performance
67 → 97 out of 100
A 30-point improvement, with a score of 97 across three mobile tests.
Desktop performance
76 → 100 out of 100
The custom animated desktop experience earned 100 across three tests.
Accessibility checks
Mobile: 90 → 100 · Desktop: 90 → 100
Automated accessibility scores improved to 100 on both mobile and desktop.
Best Practices and SEO checks
Best Practices: 100 → 100 · SEO: 100 → 100
The redesign maintained full marks for best practices and technical SEO checks on both mobile and desktop.
Google PageSpeed Insights homepage tests: July 25 and October 19, 2026. These lab measurements may vary between tests and do not measure changes in traffic or conversions.
Give visitors a useful starting point.
The new homepage introduces the service, explains the regional reach, and offers two immediate paths: request an estimate or find a local team.
A service chooser separates local, long-distance, international, commercial, packing, and storage needs. Each option leads to focused information, while planning guides support people who are still working out the details.
I revised the content around client-confirmed answers: where storage is available, how to buy packing materials, what unpacking includes, and what happens after an estimate request. Those specifics help visitors prepare for a real conversation.
Make the care behind the move visible.
Moving is physical. The website brings that quality to the screen with custom animation built around packing, protection, and the journey ahead.
On desktop, a packing-box sequence responds to scrolling through the opening hero. Farther down the page, a truck cutaway reveals how furniture and cartons are wrapped, placed, and secured. Visitors uncover the details as they scroll, turning an explanation of the service into something they can explore.
The motion gives people a reason to pause, look closer, and continue through the page. It adds personality while showing the practical care behind the company’s work, with clear service and estimate links always available.
Mobile layouts and reduced-motion settings use simpler, static presentations. The story remains complete without requiring the animation.
Make the regional differences clear.
A city name alone does not tell someone which services are available or who will handle the move.
The new directory distinguishes Humboldt offices, service areas, and affiliated operations. Chico is connected to the Redding team. Reno/Sparks explains interstate and international moving and clearly excludes moves wholly within Nevada. Santa Cruz’s affiliated services are described separately.
This is where local SEO and useful customer information meet. I reviewed a full year of existing Search Console data and a recent three-month period to identify relevant service and location questions. California–Reno moving searches informed the recommendations without broadening the company’s actual service coverage.
Established service, location, and planning-guide URLs were retained wherever appropriate. Deliberately retired paths were given specific destinations, including the old estimate URL and the former Santa Cruz page. Page titles, descriptions, internal links, and structured data were aligned with the revised content.
Guide the request before asking for contact details.
The estimate experience begins with the kind of help needed, then asks the questions relevant to that service.
The three-stage flow adapts to the request. Moving paths ask for origin, destination, and home or project size. Packing and storage requests use the service location. A date can remain flexible, and customers can indicate additional packing or storage needs.
The page also explains the follow-up: a salesperson for the relevant market will call to arrange an in-home or virtual estimate. After submission, customers receive a confirmation summary with a refined print/save layout. Managed Cloudflare Turnstile and server-side validation protect the request process.
Connect the request to the right team.
Moving inquiries route according to the origin; other service inquiries use the service location. Six office and partner destinations are configured, with a central fallback for unclear requests. That gives the business a practical handoff while keeping internal recipient details private.
Test the handoff, not just the screen.
Routing tests and actual recipient confirmations verified the path from an estimate request to the appropriate team.
Every destination confirmed receipt
All six office and partner destinations confirmed their test messages. The fallback path was confirmed as well, and all seven customer acknowledgments were received.
Authenticated email delivery
SMTP was implemented and a received test message passed SPF, DKIM, and DMARC checks. My controlled test pair arrived in the inbox.
Local validation also covered routing, reply behavior, ambiguous locations, settings, and delivery safeguards. Together, those checks tested what happens between a customer completing the form and the business receiving a useful inquiry.
Keep the experience clear on a smaller screen.
The original mobile opening was dominated by stacked office contacts. The redesign brings the service message and estimate action into that same opening view.
Responsive refinements covered navigation, readable text, form steps, and touch targets. Accessibility work included keyboard focus, form labels and errors, and correcting low-contrast labels across service and location cards.
Make the website practical to maintain.
I built a native WordPress block theme with reusable editing patterns. The team can update text, images, FAQs, and selected guides while the layout structure stays consistent. Shared business and location information is managed centrally, so an office’s details do not have to be maintained separately across every appearance.
A companion plugin keeps business information and estimate functionality separate from the theme. This gives the company an editing foundation designed around its own content and operating needs.
A foundation for the next stage of growth
The measurement implementation includes GA4 and Microsoft Clarity integration. Its event plan distinguishes successful estimate requests from preliminary interactions and keeps personal form values out of analytics events.
Clear service explanations, connected location pages, and consistent business facts support continued SEO improvements and AI-search readiness. Performance and inquiry data can guide the next round of work.
The project brings together a distinctive visual identity, purposeful animation, clearer regional services, and a tested path from inquiry to the right team. The custom WordPress foundation gives Humboldt a website it can keep building on as the business grows.
Planning a similar project? Explore my website design, SEO, and ongoing support services or use the website planning checklist to organize your priorities. For another example of improving a business inquiry path, see the Sierra Pallet case study.
In the client’s words.
“Chris is professional, thorough, and very efficient. Humboldt is very happy to have him in our corner! We highly recommend him!”
Google review ·
Can customers find the right service and reach the right team?
Planning a website with several services or locations? Let’s discuss the content, navigation, and inquiry paths your project needs, then define the scope.