Afristone - A Product-First Build That Doubled Organic Traffic in Six Months

Afristone supplies natural stone products sourced from across the globe. They had the product range and the brand values. What they needed was a website that could present both clearly and drive organic growth from day one. We built it in under a month. Traffic doubled in six.

The Brief

Afristone supplies natural stone products mined from locations around the world, with a mission to deliver quality with passion, integrity, and transparency. Their product range spans residential, commercial, and landscape applications.

Afristone came to RubyWeb via Ruby Digital with a clear objective: design and deliver a modern website that combined striking visuals with intuitive navigation, showcased the product range clearly, and laid an SEO foundation for sustainable organic growth. The project needed to communicate the brand’s offerings with clarity, present high-quality imagery, enable social sharing, and perform well on mobile.

The Challenge

This was a fresh build with no existing site to migrate from, which presented its own structural challenges. Without a baseline to reference, information architecture, technical requirements, hosting configuration, and design vision all had to be defined from scratch.

Delivery timelines were tight. Once client assets and design sign-off were received, the build needed to move quickly. Development officially began on 31 August 2021, and the site launched on 23 September 2021 – less than a month later.

  • No existing site structure to reference - information architecture had to be built from scratch
  • All content and imagery needed to be supplied and signed off by the client before development could proceed
  • Technical requirements including hosting, security, and performance benchmarks needed to be scoped early
  • SEO readiness - metadata, indexing structure, and URL architecture - had to be planned from day one
  • Mobile optimisation was essential for a product-heavy site where imagery is central to the browsing experience
  • Stakeholder alignment on design vision required clear checkpoints and feedback loops

Our Approach

We structured the project around two parallel tracks: client alignment and build execution. Design direction, sitemap, and wireframes were agreed first. Development followed once assets and sign-off were in place.

SEO best practices were built into the architecture from the outset – URL structure, metadata, image alt attributes, and on-page hierarchy were all planned as part of the build specification, giving Ruby Digital’s marketing team a clean foundation to work from immediately after launch.

Architecture & UX Decisions

The site was designed to lead with product. Navigation was structured to surface Afristone’s range clearly and intuitively, with product categories accessible within one or two clicks from any page. High-resolution imagery was central to the layout.

Mobile-first principles were applied throughout, ensuring the visual-heavy product pages performed as well on smartphone as on desktop. Social sharing was integrated at the product level to support discoverability beyond organic search.

The Build

The core deliverable was a modern, visually engaging WordPress website built from scratch on a clean SEO foundation. Key deliverables included:

  • Full custom WordPress website design and development from a new build
  • Sitemap and wireframe creation aligned to product range and user navigation goals
  • High-resolution product imagery integration with optimised file sizes for performance
  • Mobile-first responsive layout across all page types
  • SEO-ready architecture including URL structure, metadata, image alt text, and on-page hierarchy
  • Social sharing integration at product level
  • Hosting configuration, security setup, and performance optimisation
  • Launch completed 23 September 2021 – 23 days from development start

The Outcome

In the six months following launch, organic traffic doubled – a 100% increase. Visitors arriving through organic search demonstrated strong engagement, with notably high average session durations.

The clean SEO foundation built into the site gave Ruby Digital’s team an immediately workable platform for organic growth – and the results showed within the first half-year.

Frequently Asked Questions

For a well-scoped project with assets and design sign-off provided on time, we can move from development start to launch in under a month. The Afristone site was built and live in 23 days. Timelines depend on content readiness and feedback turnaround.
It means URL structure, page hierarchy, metadata, image alt attributes, and internal linking are all planned as part of the build specification rather than added after the fact. A site built with SEO in mind from the start gives any future marketing activity a cleaner, stronger foundation.
Through information architecture - structuring categories and navigation so the range feels accessible rather than exhausting. Products are surfaced clearly within one or two clicks, imagery is prioritised, and browsing flows naturally from category to product detail.
Especially so. High-resolution product imagery and multi-category navigation can break badly on mobile if not designed for it from the start. Mobile-first means the experience is designed for smaller screens and scaled up, rather than a desktop experience scaled down.
Organic traffic doubled in the six months following launch - a 100% increase. Visitors from organic search also showed strong engagement metrics, with high average session durations indicating genuine product interest.
We build from scratch regularly. It requires more upfront planning - information architecture, technical scoping, and content alignment all need to happen before development begins - but a clean build with no legacy constraints often produces a stronger end result.