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Case study

IHOME Design & Renovation

A new website for an Oakville design-build firm, fast on phones and clear to Google and AI search.

IHOME designs, permits, renovates and builds custom homes in Oakville and across the Greater Toronto Area. We rebuilt their website from their own brand, photos and projects, and set it up for Google and AI search. The new site went live on October 5, 2026.

Visit designihome.ca ↗

Connu score

25 checks of how easily Google and AI assistants can find, read and trust a website, scored out of 100.

Old site

48out of 100

Level 2 of 4

Findable

New site

92out of 100

Level 4 of 4

Search- and AI-readable

The old site was measured just before IHOME's domain moved to the new site, and the new site after launch. The checks cover crawling, page basics, speed, AI readability and trust. Levels go from 1, basic presence, to 4, search- and AI-readable.

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What search engines and AI assistants read

The old homepage looked good. What it told Google and AI assistants was less clear.

Old siteNew site
Page titleIhome Design&Renovation Inc. copyExtra characters at the end of the page titles.IHOME Design & Renovation | Oakville Design-Build
Page descriptionDesign & Permit → Renovation → Custom Home → Commercial & InstitutionalDesign, building permits, renovation and custom homes in Oakville and across the GTA. One team and one contract, from the first drawing to the final inspection.
Page languageMarked as ChineseEnglish
Main headings (H1) on the homepage61
Business details for Google and AI (structured data)The site name onlyBusiness type, address, opening hours, service area and services
Pages without a description60

On a phone

The same phone on the same slow 4G connection. Each frame is the screen that many seconds after the page was opened.

Old siteThe main photo is still loading at 10 s.
  1. Old site on a phone, 1 second after opening1 s
  2. Old site on a phone, 3 seconds after opening3 s
  3. Old site on a phone, 6 seconds after opening6 s
  4. Old site on a phone, 10 seconds after opening10 s
New siteThe first screen is complete at 1 s.
  1. New site on a phone, 1 second after opening1 s
  2. New site on a phone, 3 seconds after opening3 s
  3. New site on a phone, 6 seconds after opening6 s
  4. New site on a phone, 10 seconds after opening10 s

One load of each homepage in Chrome, with the phone and connection Google PageSpeed uses for its mobile test: a 4x slower processor, 1.6 Mbps and 150 ms latency. The old site was loaded from Strikingly, where it was hosted.

Until the main content shows on a phone
24.3 s2.7 s
Largest Contentful Paint, Google’s slow-4G phone test
Mobile performance score
3694
Google PageSpeed, out of 100
Time the page is frozen while loading
878 ms42 ms
Total Blocking Time, same test

Homepage in Google’s slow-4G phone test (PageSpeed Insights: a mid-range phone on a 1.6 Mbps connection), median of three runs. Real visitors on faster phones and networks see the page sooner; the test keeps the before and after comparable.

The website

  • A new design built from IHOME's own brand, photos and finished projects.
  • A page for each service: design, building permits, renovation, and rebuilds and custom homes.
  • A consultation request form that goes straight to IHOME's inbox.
  • Every address of the old site sends visitors to the matching new page, so existing Google results keep working.

Search and AI setup

  • Page titles and descriptions in the words people search with.
  • Business and service details as structured data that Google and AI assistants read.
  • Images compressed and fonts trimmed so the first screen loads fast on phones.
  • Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools connected, and a before-and-after benchmark of Google results and of what ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode and Perplexity answer.

The new website

The new IHOME website on a desktop screenThe new IHOME website on a phone

What we measure next

Rankings, Google Maps results and AI recommendations take weeks to follow a new site. We measure IHOME's searches and the AI answers again after four and eight weeks, and will add the results here.

Measured so far: the old site on October 4, 2026, the day before the switch, and the new site on October 5, 2026, after launch.

Free website check

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Run the same 25 checks on your own website. It takes about 20 seconds, with no sign-up.

  • Your Connu score out of 100, and its level
  • What to fix first, check by check
  • How fast your homepage loads on a phone, from Google’s PageSpeed test
  • What search engines and AI assistants can read on your site
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