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Redesigned, built, and launched a B2B leasing site from the ground up, then grew it to 18K visits in its first year through design and SEO strategy working together.
A company that outgrew its website
Hansel Leasing, a subsidiary of Hansel Automotive, one of the largest dealership groups in Northern California, offers equipment and vehicle leasing solutions to businesses of every size. The problem: their website looked like it was built in 2012 and hadn't been touched since. Clunky navigation, zero SEO structure, no clear value proposition, and a design that actively worked against the credibility of a company managing multi-million dollar leasing agreements.
I was brought in as the sole designer to not just redesign it, but to build it, launch it, and own it going forward.
Three things actively working against conversion
Businesses shopping for leasing solutions are high-intent, research-driven buyers. They're comparing vendors, evaluating credibility, and making decisions that involve significant financial commitment. A dated, disorganized website doesn't just fail to convert, it actively signals the wrong thing about the company behind it.
→ No industry pages. Hansel Leasing serves restaurants, contractors, healthcare providers, and more, but the old site treated every visitor the same. There was no way for a restaurant owner to see that Hansel understood their specific equipment needs.
→ No SEO foundation. The site was essentially invisible to search. No metadata structure, no keyword strategy, no content architecture that search engines could index meaningfully.
→ No design system. The visual language was inconsistent, trust signals were absent, and the CTAs were buried.
Initial Design Audit
Auditing the original site to identify friction points and opportunities before touching Figma
Aligning on users before opening Figma
Before opening Figma, I sat down with the Leasing Director and the SEO Strategist to align on three things: who we were designing for, what actions we needed them to take, and what the business needed to rank for. That conversation shaped everything that came next.
Primary users were business owners and office managers, busy, skeptical, and price-sensitive. Two foundational decisions emerged from that conversation: build industry-specific landing pages so a contractor landing from search arrives on a page that speaks their language, and design the entire site with SEO architecture as a constraint from day one, page hierarchy, heading structure, metadata, and content blocks all planned in Figma before a single line of Squarespace was touched.
→ Stakeholder research. Collaborated with the Leasing Director and Content/SEO Strategist to understand business goals, target audience, and brand identity.
→ Wireframing & prototyping. Created initial concepts and high-fidelity prototypes in Figma, presenting to stakeholders before building.
→ Full build & launch. Built and launched the final site in Squarespace, negotiating between design intent and platform constraints in real time.
→ Ongoing management. Continue to manage the live site, new pages, forms, content updates, and analytics-driven iteration.
Hi-fi prototypes presented to stakeholders for alignment before development began
The decisions that moved the needle
Navigation
The original site had a flat structure with no clear hierarchy. I redesigned the nav to lead with leasing categories, vehicles, equipment, and specialty, so users could self-select immediately rather than hunting through generic pages.
Trust signals above the fold
Leasing is a financial decision. Every page leads with credibility markers: Hansel's decades of history, the parent company's scale, and partnership logos. Businesses needed to feel safe before they scrolled.
Industry pages
Each vertical page follows the same pattern, a specific headline naming the industry, a short problem statement, relevant equipment categories, and a clear CTA. These pages do two things simultaneously: convert visitors who self-identify, and give search engines something specific to index.
Form design
The inquiry form was previously buried. I moved it to the hero of every key page and simplified it from 9 fields to 4. The question wasn't "how do we collect information," it was "how do we remove every possible reason not to reach out."
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Left: Figma wireframes · Right: Final live design
18K visits built from zero
Since launching in March 2025, the site has generated 18K total visits, built from essentially zero organic presence. The organic search number matters most strategically: it represents the SEO architecture working exactly as designed, with business owners finding Hansel's industry pages rather than a competitor's. That's not a traffic spike from a campaign, it's a compounding asset built into the site's structure from day one.
→ +1,461% organic traffic growth year over year (Google Search Console)
→ 18K total visits · +558% YoY · +635% unique visitors · +389% pageviews
→ 50% direct traffic, the brand is being actively sought by name. Desktop-majority split confirms the B2B audience is making decisions at a desk, not on a phone.