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Mago Rods Custom Fishing Rods · Trade website Perth — built by Source Digital
Case Study · Custom HTML Build

A custom site
for custom rods.

Mago Rods builds hand-finished fishing rods for Perth anglers — one rod at a time, to order. Their old site was a generic Wix template that looked like every other business in WA. We replaced it with a bespoke HTML build that makes the craftsmanship the hero.

Client
Mago Rods
Industry
Custom Fishing Rods
Platform
Custom HTML/CSS
Timeline
2.5 weeks
Services
Web design, dev, SEO
0.8s
First paint (TTFB + render)
4.2x
Organic traffic growth
100
Lighthouse performance score
9
Pages hand-built
01
The Challenge

Where Mago Rods Started

Mago Rods is a craft business. Every rod is built to order, taking 20-40 hours of hand work. That story wasn't landing on their old Wix site — the template was generic, the photography wasn't given room to breathe, and enquiries were trickling in at a rate that didn't match the quality of the work.

The owner wanted three things: fast, clean, and something that felt like the rods themselves — considered, hand-made, not off-the-rack. A template-based build was never going to deliver that.

02
The Approach

Strategy Before Pixels

We decided early to skip a CMS entirely. No WordPress, no Shopify, no Webflow — just hand-written HTML, CSS and a sprinkle of vanilla JS. Fewer moving parts, fewer attack surfaces, and a genuine performance edge. The trade-off is that non-technical updates need to come back to us, but for a business where the product range barely changes year to year, that's a feature not a bug.

Design-wise we leaned into the craftsmanship story — big product photography, tight typography, and a build gallery showcasing rods in progress. Everything on the page exists to move the visitor toward one CTA: request a custom rod.

03
The Build

What We Shipped

Built on Custom HTML / CSS / JavaScript. Everything below was delivered in-house — no outsourcing, no handoffs, no excuses.

HTML5CSS3Vanilla JSNetlifyFormspreeSchema.orgWebPCloudflare

A nine-page custom HTML site: home, rod builder process, gallery, about, materials, testimonials, blog, FAQs, and enquiry. Every page hand-coded for sub-second page loads and a perfect 100/100 Lighthouse performance score. SEO optimised for Perth fishing keywords with schema markup that gets Mago showing up in map packs.

  • Bespoke HTML/CSS/JS build — zero dependencies
  • Hand-coded image lazy loading and responsive srcsets
  • Custom gallery component with keyboard navigation
  • LocalBusiness + Product schema for local Perth SEO
  • 100/100 Lighthouse performance score
  • Formspree-based enquiry form with spam protection
  • Netlify hosting with global CDN
  • Blog scaffold for future content SEO
04
The Outcome

Numbers & Results

Organic traffic grew 4.2x in the 90 days after launch as the site started ranking for 'custom fishing rods Perth', 'hand-made fishing rods WA', and long-tail build queries. Enquiry volume tripled. Page load dropped from 4.1s on the old Wix site to 0.8s first paint. And the owner is fielding more serious, ready-to-buy enquiries instead of tyre-kickers.

MetricResult
Lighthouse Performance100/100
First Contentful Paint0.8s
Organic traffic growth (90 days)4.2x
Monthly enquiry volume3x
Top 3 ranking keywords (Perth)7
"
The site loads instantly and the rods look the way they deserve to look. Tristan understood the craft side of what we do — it doesn't feel like a template shop, it feels like a workshop. Exactly what we wanted.
Magnus, Mago Rods
Performance
100/100
Perfect Lighthouse score across performance, accessibility, SEO and best practices.
Organic Traffic
4.2x
90-day growth driven by ranking for Perth fishing rod keywords.
Enquiry Quality
3x volume
More enquiries, and higher intent — fewer window-shoppers.

Your project. Next.

Whether you're launching, replatforming, or scaling — we'll build you a site that actually converts. One team. Perth-based. No outsourcing.