RL Remodeling - WordPress to Next.js Migration & AI Integration

The Client

RL Remodeling, Inc. is a premier general contractor headquartered in Woodland Hills, California, with additional offices in Venice Beach, Costa Mesa (Orange County), San Diego, and Santa Barbara. Founded in 2006, the company holds California General Building Contractor license #885032 and has earned a reputation as one of the best residential remodeling firms in Greater Los Angeles.

With a satisfactory rate of 152, RL Remodeling ranks in the top 1% of over 335,000 licensed contractors in the state of California. They have accumulated numerous awards including Best of Houzz from 2014 through 2025 for Super Service, Angie's List 2015 Super Service Award, and were voted the #4 best contractor in LA by Build Zoom in 2017. They are BBB accredited with an A+ rating and were featured on Bravo TV's "Million Dollar Listing LA" for a new construction project in Culver City.

Their services span kitchen remodels, bathroom remodels, backyard transformations, room additions, garage conversions, ADUs, custom single-family home design and construction, new construction, and commercial remodeling. Over the past several years, RL Remodeling has worked on at least 475 projects with an average permit value of $33,165.

Industry: Home Remodeling & Construction
Location: Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego & Santa Barbara, California
Project Type: Full Website Redesign & Migration + AI Integration
Live Site: rl-remodeling.com

The Challenge

RL Remodeling's original website was built on WordPress - a common choice for contractor websites, but one that had become a serious liability. The nature of a remodeling business demands heavy use of high-resolution images and videos to showcase completed projects, before-and-after transformations, 3D design renders, and customer testimonials. WordPress, with its plugin-dependent architecture, was buckling under the weight of this media-rich content.

The problems were multifaceted and deeply interconnected:

• Abysmal loading speeds: Pages loaded in 8+ seconds on desktop and even slower on mobile. The homepage, with its gallery of project images and embedded testimonial videos, was the worst offender - often taking 12+ seconds to fully render. Google PageSpeed Insights scores were consistently below 35, placing the site in the red zone for both mobile and desktop.
• Plugin overload: The site relied on 25+ active plugins for galleries, sliders, contact forms, SEO, caching, security, video embedding, analytics, and more. Each plugin added its own CSS and JavaScript files, creating render-blocking chains that compounded load times. Plugin conflicts were a regular occurrence, especially after updates.
• Maintenance nightmare: WordPress core updates, plugin updates, theme updates, PHP version updates - every update cycle risked breaking something. The team had to perform daily checks to ensure everything was functioning, and each plugin update required testing across the entire site. This was extremely time-consuming and cost-ineffective for a business that needed to focus on remodeling, not website maintenance.
• Poor image and video handling: WordPress served full-resolution images regardless of the user's device or viewport size. Videos were loaded eagerly, blocking the main thread and delaying interactive content. There was no automatic WebP conversion, no responsive image serving, and no intelligent lazy loading - all critical for a site with hundreds of high-res project photos.
• Mobile experience breakdown: With over 60% of RL Remodeling's traffic coming from mobile devices (homeowners searching for contractors on their phones), the broken mobile experience was directly costing them leads. Buttons were too small, galleries didn't resize properly, and the hamburger menu was unreliable.
• High bounce rate: The combination of slow loading and poor mobile UX resulted in a high bounce rate, meaning potential customers were leaving before even seeing RL Remodeling's impressive project portfolio and 5-star reviews! Every bounced visitor was a potentially lost lead worth thousands of dollars.
• SEO stagnation: Despite having quality content, testimonials, and blog posts, the site's poor Core Web Vitals were dragging down search rankings. Competitors with faster sites were outranking RL Remodeling for key terms like "kitchen remodel Los Angeles" and "bathroom remodel near me."
• No intelligent customer engagement: The site relied solely on a basic contact form and phone number. There was no way to engage visitors outside of business hours, answer common questions instantly, or qualify leads before they reached the sales team - resulting in missed opportunities and wasted time on unqualified inquiries.

Our Solution

We executed a complete migration from WordPress to a custom Next.js application, redesigned the UI from the ground up, and - in a subsequent phase - integrated a custom AI-powered customer support and lead generation agent. The goal was not just to fix performance, but to build a website that actively works as a business tool: converting visitors into qualified leads around the clock.

Phase 1: Next.js Migration & UI Redesign

We rebuilt the entire website on Next.js with React, leveraging server-side rendering for optimal SEO and blazing-fast initial page loads. Every page was redesigned with a focus on showcasing RL Remodeling's work in the best possible light while maintaining exceptional performance.

For styling, we developed a custom lightweight SCSS (Sass) framework specifically optimized for this project. Instead of relying on heavy CSS frameworks like Bootstrap or Tailwind that import thousands of unused utility classes, our custom framework includes only the styles actually needed - resulting in a CSS footprint that is a fraction of what the WordPress theme produced. This approach gives us complete control over the design while keeping the stylesheet lean and maintainable.

Smart Image & Video Optimization

Given that RL Remodeling's website is fundamentally a visual showcase, image and video optimization was the single most impactful technical challenge. We implemented a multi-layered approach:

• Next.js Image component: All images use the built-in Next.js Image component with automatic WebP/AVIF conversion, responsive srcsets (serving different image sizes based on viewport width), and native lazy loading - ensuring that only visible images are loaded and in the optimal format for each device.
• On-demand video loading: Testimonial and project videos are loaded only when a user explicitly clicks to play. Thumbnail placeholders are shown initially, eliminating the massive performance penalty of eagerly loading multiple video files on page load.
• CDN delivery: All static assets are served through a CDN with aggressive caching headers, ensuring that returning visitors experience near-instant page loads regardless of their geographic location.
• Priority loading: Above-the-fold hero images are marked with priority loading attributes, while everything below the fold is deferred - creating the perception of instant page loads even on slower connections.

UI/UX Improvements

The redesign focused on converting visitors into leads. Key UI improvements included:

• A redesigned service showcase with dedicated pages for each service (kitchen remodel, bathroom remodel, backyard, room addition, custom homes, etc.) featuring project galleries and relevant testimonials.
• A prominent consultation CTA visible on every page, with both phone and form options for maximum conversion.
• A testimonial section that surfaces the company's 5-star reviews from Yelp, Google, Houzz, Facebook, and Angie's List - building trust before visitors even pick up the phone.
• Mobile-first navigation with a clean, accessible hamburger menu, large tap targets, and swipeable project galleries optimized for touch devices.
• A featured projects section highlighting notable work like the Culver City project from "Million Dollar Listing LA" and the Venice 4-home new construction.
• An integrated blog with rich content on remodeling topics for ongoing SEO value and brand authority.

Phase 2: AI Agent Integration

After the website migration stabilized and the performance gains were confirmed, we moved to the second phase: integrating a custom AI-powered agent directly into the website. This was not a generic chatbot with canned responses - it is a purpose-built AI assistant fine-tuned on RL Remodeling's specific business data.

The AI agent was trained on:

• RL Remodeling's complete service catalog with detailed descriptions, typical timelines, and general pricing ranges for each service type.
• Service area coverage across Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, and Santa Barbara, including specific cities and neighborhoods served.
• The company's licensing, insurance, and accreditation details (License #885032, BBB A+ rating, Best of Houzz awards, etc.).
• Common customer questions and their detailed answers, drawn from years of customer interactions and FAQ data.
• The company's sales process, including how consultations work (complimentary in-person or virtual), what to expect during a project, and financing options.
• Project examples and case studies that the agent can reference when discussing similar work with potential customers.

The agent serves a dual purpose: customer support (answering questions about services, timelines, process, and qualifications instantly, 24/7) and lead generation (qualifying visitors by gathering project details like remodel type, home location, budget range, and timeline, then routing warm leads directly to the appropriate project manager). This means RL Remodeling never misses an inquiry - even at 2 AM on a Sunday when a homeowner is browsing remodeling ideas.

Technical Implementation

The Results

The migration delivered immediate and measurable improvements across every key metric:

• Google PageSpeed score jumped from below 35 to 90+ on both mobile and desktop - a transformative improvement that directly boosted search rankings and user trust.
• Average page load time dropped from 8+ seconds to under 2 seconds - a 4x improvement that dramatically reduced user frustration and abandonment.
• Bounce rate decreased by more than 20% - meaning significantly more visitors are now exploring project galleries, reading testimonials, and submitting consultation requests instead of leaving after the first page.
• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) improved from 10+ seconds to under 2.5 seconds on mobile - a critical Core Web Vital that directly influences Google search rankings.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) reduced to near-zero - no more jarring page jumps as images and videos loaded, creating a smooth, professional browsing experience.
• WordPress plugin dependency eliminated entirely - from 25+ plugins to zero. No more daily update checks, compatibility testing, or security patching. The maintenance workload dropped dramatically.
• Hosting and operational costs reduced - the streamlined Next.js architecture requires significantly less server resources than the bloated WordPress + plugin stack, lowering monthly hosting bills.
• AI agent captures leads 24/7 - visitors who arrive outside business hours are now engaged immediately by the AI assistant, which qualifies their needs and captures contact information. Early data shows a meaningful increase in lead capture rates compared to the old form-only approach.
• Improved search rankings for competitive terms including "kitchen remodel Los Angeles," "bathroom remodel near me," and "general contractor Woodland Hills" - driven by the combined impact of faster page speeds, better Core Web Vitals, and enhanced structured data.
• Mobile conversion rate improved significantly - the mobile-first redesign with proper touch targets, fast loading galleries, and easy-to-use consultation forms means more mobile visitors convert into leads.

Key Takeaways