E-Commerce Platform Rebuild for Thornton & Partners

The Challenge

Thornton & Partners, a London-based professional services firm, had an ageing WordPress website that was slow, difficult to update, and failing to convert visitors into leads. Their development team spent more time fighting the platform than improving it.

Key pain points:

• Page load times of 6+ seconds on mobile devices
• No content management flexibility — every update required developer involvement
• Poor SEO performance — losing ground to competitors in organic search
• No multi-language support — unable to serve their growing European client base
• Security concerns — WordPress plugins with known vulnerabilities

Implementation

The project was delivered in three phases over 12 weeks:

Phase 1 (Weeks 1-4): Foundation

• Discovery workshops and content audit
• Information architecture and wireframes
• Design system and component library

Phase 2 (Weeks 5-9): Development

• Frontend development with Next.js
• CMS configuration and content migration
• Integration with HubSpot CRM
• Multi-language setup

Phase 3 (Weeks 10-12): Launch

• Performance optimization and testing
• SEO migration (301 redirects, meta data)
• Team training on CMS
• Phased launch with monitoring