Proposal · prepared for Capstone Solicitors · 18 May 2026

A few specific fixes for capstonelaw.co.uk.

I rebuild small-business sites in my spare time when I can see they are leaving credibility on the table. Three things stood out on mobile when I opened Capstone Solicitors. Three findings below, then a working rebuild you can click through at /preview/.

Open live preview ↗ Read the three findings Reply to the proposal

Address · 62 Gloucester Road, Bishopston, Bristol BS7 8BH Trading since · 1973 Principal · Robert J. Wilson, Partner

Capstone Solicitors, 62 Gloucester Road, Bishopston, Bristol. The green-painted corner shopfront with gold serif signage above the door.

62 Gloucester Road · Bishopston · since 1973

The Bishopston corner solicitors. Sharples & Co opened the door in 1973. Open the live preview ↗

Three findings, in order of revenue impact

What I noticed on the live capstonelaw.co.uk.

A walk-through on a phone over coffee, 18 May 2026.

01

The cookie banner shows un-rendered template placeholders.

What I saw: Open the live capstonelaw.co.uk on any device. At the foot of every page the Complianz cookie banner renders literal template tokens that were never compiled: "Manage {vendor_count} vendors", and three separate links whose anchor text is the unsubstituted "{title}". These are the cookie-policy link, the privacy-statement link, and the impressum link. The banner has shipped in this state, on every page of the live site, for some time. It is the first thing a visitor sees once cookies fire.
After rebuild: After rebuild: no cookie wall on a brochure site (a UK solicitor with no third-party trackers, no remarketing, and no statistics consent obligation does not need one). If a cookie notice is appropriate, the link text is the real, compiled label. Either way the visitor stops being shown unfinished template glue.

02

Fifty-three years on Gloucester Road, mentioned only in passing.

What I saw: The homepage carries one sentence about the lineage: "from our offices on Gloucester Road, Bishopston, Bristol which were originally opened (as Sharples & Co) in 1973". That sentence is the single strongest credibility line in the Capstone inventory. It is currently set in plain body type, with no heading, no timeline, no dates between 1973 and 2013, and no Capstone-incorporation marker. A first-time visitor on a phone scans past it. A customer comparing Capstone to a Bristol-city-centre commercial firm or to one of the chain conveyancers cannot tell that they are dealing with a 53-year Gloucester Road practice.
After rebuild: After rebuild: a heritage block on a dark band centred on the homepage. "Gloucester Road, since 1973." A 5-entry timeline (1973 Sharples & Co opens, 2013 Capstone Solicitors partnership forms, 2025 Capstone Solicitors Limited incorporated, today the two-partner Bishopston firm). Person schema on the named partners. The 53-year line stops being a parenthetical and becomes the second-strongest scroll moment on the page.

03

The Law Society Conveyancing Quality (CQS) badge is shown but never named.

What I saw: The CQS accreditation logo sits on the live homepage. CQS is the Law Society's conveyancing-quality scheme, the single industry credential that separates a high-street conveyancer from a volume online-only competitor. The /services/residential-conveyancing/ page, where the £400,000-Bishopston-terrace customer actually arrives, never mentions the badge by name and never explains what it covers (firm-wide due diligence, anti-fraud, lender panel acceptance, complaints handling). The badge ends up looking like a decorative footer logo.
After rebuild: After rebuild: CQS is named in the eyebrow above the hero H1, called out in a credentials strip directly under the fold, and given a short "what CQS means in practice" paragraph on the residential-conveyancing page. The badge stops being decoration and starts being a selling point against the online-only conveyancers on every Bishopston listing.

Current vs proposed, stack inventory

What changes underneath when the site moves from WordPress to a small Astro build on Vercel.

Current ↗ capstonelaw.co.uk

Platform: WordPress (custom theme "Capstone" by Cloud 10)
Hosting: WordPress shared hosting, default WP image pipeline
Cookie tool: Complianz banner, template variables un-substituted on every page
Email: enquiries@capstonelaw.co.uk (catch-all)
SEO: No JSON-LD. No og:image. No meta description. <title> is "Capstone Solicitors" only.
Heritage: 53 years on Gloucester Road, mentioned in one body sentence with no timeline.
CQS: Law Society Conveyancing Quality badge displayed; never named in conveyancing copy.

Proposed

Framework: Astro static site (Astro 6, single inline page, no build dependencies)
Hosting: Vercel edge network, sub-100ms first-byte across the UK
Cookie tool: None on a brochure site with no trackers. Plain cookie notice if needed, with real link text.
Email: enquiries@capstonelaw.co.uk plus per-solicitor inboxes if you want them (robert@, claire@)
SEO: LegalService + LocalBusiness + Person x 2 + Service x 3 + FAQPage schema at build time
Heritage: "Gloucester Road since 1973" heritage block with a 5-entry timeline and partner bios
CQS: Named in the hero eyebrow, in a credentials strip, and explained in plain prose on the conveyancing page

Three-week build plan

From kickoff to launch in three weeks.

Week 1

"Gloucester Road since 1973" hero with credentials strip
CQS named in eyebrow, on the conveyancing page, in the footer
Heritage block: Sharples & Co 1973, Capstone 2013, Limited 2025, today

Week 2

Three service pages: residential conveyancing, commercial property, wills
Partner profiles with proper bios (Robert J. Wilson, Claire L. Speake)
Cookie banner stripped or rebuilt without the template placeholders

Week 3

LegalService + LocalBusiness + Person x 2 + Service x 3 + FAQPage schema
Title, meta description, og:image set on every page
DNS cutover, WordPress retired, analytics enabled, launch

Pricing

Fixed price for the rebuild. Optional monthly care.

No retainer. No contract. No in-person visits, fully remote from Switzerland.

• One round of revisions before launch
• DNS cutover handled (you keep the domain in your name)
• 30 days of post-launch tweaks at no extra cost
• Source code handed over on day 60 (you own everything)

Build

Full rebuild

Astro static site, schema, heritage block, three service pages, DNS cutover, WordPress retired.

£2,000

one-off, fixed

Care

Hosting and ongoing care

Hosting on Vercel, schema kept current, security updates, monthly analytics email, one editorial change per month.

£150/mo

cancel any time

Optional

Embedded chatbot

Trained on the firm\'s FAQs (conveyancing fees, lasting power of attorney, probate timelines), routes serious enquiries to the right inbox.

£50/mo

optional

Frequently asked

Four things worth answering before you reply.

What happens to the existing WordPress site and the capstonelaw.co.uk domain?

The domain stays. Only the hosting moves. The site moves from WordPress on Cloud 10 to a small Astro static site on Vercel. The enquiries@capstonelaw.co.uk inbox continues unchanged. Any current inbound links and bookmarks redirect to their new equivalents. The WordPress subscription cancels (saves the monthly Cloud 10 fee and the Complianz cookie-banner subscription). After launch every visitor sees a faster, properly-titled page with no template placeholder text.

You say "no cookie banner". What about UK PECR and ICO compliance?

A brochure site for a UK solicitor that loads no third-party tracking pixels, no Google Analytics, no Meta pixel and no advertising cookies has no consent obligation under PECR. The current Capstone site does load Complianz, which is loading the banner specifically to gate categories you do not actually use. If you want analytics, a privacy-respecting tool that does not need consent (Plausible, Fathom, Vercel Analytics) is included in the rebuild scope. The choice is yours. The point is that the banner stops looking unfinished either way.

How does the heritage block actually work and what will it say?

Two columns. Left: editorial prose. "1973. The corner of Gloucester Road and Berkeley Road opens as Sharples & Co. Fifty-three years later the same address is still answering the door to Bishopston conveyancing files, Bath-stone party-wall queries and the upper-flat-of-a-Victorian-conversion lease reviews that have spread up the road since." Right: a typographic timeline. 1973 Sharples & Co opens. 2013 Capstone Solicitors partnership forms (1 February). 2025 Capstone Solicitors Limited incorporated, 9 May. Today, Robert J. Wilson and Claire L. Speake. Person schema on both partners. The lineage stops being a parenthetical and becomes the page's centre of gravity.

You mentioned the Christian ethos line. Is the rebuild going to lean on that?

No. The values block expresses the underlying posture, plain-language fee transparency, no upselling, the same solicitor on the file from start to finish, without naming the religion. The current homepage names it once in passing and the rebuild does the same, in the about section rather than the hero. The reason: the customer choosing Capstone for a Bishopston conveyancing job is choosing on credentials and street address first. The ethos belongs in the about page, not the H1.

Next step

Reply if the rebuild is worth a twenty-minute call.

If the proposal lands, reply with two or three 20-minute slots in the next ten days for a video call. I take on three Bristol builds this quarter, and first confirmed wins the slot. If I do not hear back by 28 May 2026, the proposal site comes down.

Open live preview ↗ Reply to the proposal

See the rebuild

A working preview you can click through.

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Open the live rebuild ↗