Case Study: Westside Jiu Jitsu Acadamy

About the project

Westside Jiu Jitsu Academy x Hailstorm-Development

Tab Watkins & Ken Short, founders and coaches at Westside Jiu Jitsu Academy, reached out to Hailstorm back in September 2023 for help rebranding and updating their existing site for 313 BJJ West. Since we built and launched the original site in February, the content was still good and we were able to repurpose it for the new site.

Some of our goals for this project were to:

Keep a similar style and layout to the existing 313 BJJ West site
Update photos and other static media assets to include the updated branding
Add a new section where affiliates can be added
Improve overall site accessibility
Plan, strategize, and identify a rollout plan for the migration and new launch date

RoleS
Website Migration
Media & Content Migration
Web Design
Analytics & SEO

Client
WestsideJJA.com

Date
December 2023

The Challenge

As we previously mentioned, we built the original site for 313 BJJ West, so all we needed to do was migrate the existing content to the new domain. Then, once the site was updated with the new gym name and logo, we could start to send traffic to the Westside Jiu Jitsu Academy site.

When changing domains or launching a new site, there is a risk of losing traffic. For example, if redirects aren’t set up properly and users try to access an old page, they will be sent to a 404 page if the page doesn’t exist on the new site. After planning the launch and configuring Google Analytics for the Westside site, we were successfully able to retain existing URLs and continue to increase

Project Timeline

Check out the full timeline of the project below, starting with planning for the original site for 313 BJJ West.

313 BJJ West Planning Starts

Planning for the new 313 BJJ West site started in late December 2022, with a planned launch in spring 2023.

December 28, 2022

313 BJJ West Website Launches

Students are able to book trial classes, view the current schedule, learn about their instructors, and more - for the first time.

February 20, 2023

Planning for Westside Jiu Jitsu Academy Starts

With the gym affiliation changing, the site needed to as well. We began talks of what the new site would look like and how we would send new users looking for 313 to the Westside JJA site.

August 20, 2023

Westside JJA Website Launches

After planning content migration and talking about SEO impacts for launching, we were successfully able to launch earlier this fall.

Check Out Westside Jiu Jitsu AcademySeptember 10, 2023

The Results

New users

+ 500

Bounce rate

- 0 %

Sessions

+ 0

As of 12/11/23, Westside Jiu Jitsu Academy has seen an uptick of pageviews by 1,750 new users in the last 30 days. Also, their bounce rate has decreased, and their average session duration increased as well.

For reference:

A session is the browsing session of a single user on your site.
Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits. It is the number of visits in which a person leaves your website from the landing page without proceeding or browsing further.
Average session duration is the total duration of sessions (in seconds) divided by the number of sessions.
Pageviews are defined as a view on a page of your site that’s being tracked by Analytics code. Each refresh counts as a new pageview.