A platform ceiling
A website-builder template dictated the layout, the performance, and even the footer, which still advertised the platform rather than the brand.
A faster tour website that kept every ranking.
Rio Day Trip ran a template travel site. I rebuilt it as a fast multilingual platform on Next.js, migrating every URL so the search visibility the operator had already earned carried over intact.
Before & after
Before and after the rebuild.
Before, the template site
After, the rebuild
What I did
The work, up close.
15 pieces of the build, every one a real page from the finished site.
Homepage
The homepage is branded to Rio, not to a template
A panoramic hero with a controlled navy gradient, the brand promise given real hierarchy, 4 proof points, and 3 immediate actions. Rubik carries Latin and Hebrew so the identity holds in either direction.
11 coordinated homepage sections
Tour index
4 flagship tours compared on one screen
Tours moved out of the homepage into their own index, so a traveler can compare the whole range at a glance instead of scrolling through sections hunting for the right one.
4 flagship tours, 6 recommended experiences
Tour template
Every tour has its own indexable page
A long-form description, what you will see, traveler quotes, and a structured booking sidebar. The page answers the questions that normally delay a booking before the visitor opens a chat.
1 reusable template across every tour
Pricing panel
Price and conditions shown before enquiry
A high-visibility price with the current discount, what is included, pickup time and duration. No hunting, and no messaging the team just to find out what a trip costs.
Price, discount, inclusions and pickup all visible
Visual storytelling
Photography carries the itinerary
Each tour carries destination photography and what-you-will-see sections, so the experience feels tangible before anyone commits. Real imagery removes doubt rather than decorating the page.
357 images in the project library
Private tours
Group pricing published, no call required
Private and tailored trips get their own page with full-day and half-day group rates, so larger parties can qualify themselves before they ever enquire.
Full-day and half-day group rates published
Cross-sell
Secondary experiences get their own pages
Hang gliding, tropical islands, Petropolis, Buzios and more, each with its own page. This widens the entry points into the site and gives the team more to offer once a traveler has arrived.
6 recommended experiences
Content
Guides reach travellers at the research stage
Practical and inspirational articles about Rio and Brazil, tagged into topics that link back to relevant tours, so research traffic turns into booking traffic later.
13 articles, 109 topic pages
Social proof
Reviews are attributed to named travellers
A dedicated reviews destination with traveler photographs and named sources, reinforced by a carousel on the homepage. Proof that is easy to believe and easy to verify.
Reviews page plus homepage carousel
Gallery
The blog archive was migrated in full
The existing 2018 to 2019 photography was preserved and given modern interaction: responsive masonry columns, lazy loading, a full-screen lightbox, and deep links for historical gallery URLs.
43 legacy gallery URLs redirected, not lost
Multilingual
Hebrew runs as a full right-to-left layout
A genuine right-to-left document rather than right-aligned text. Navigation, carousel direction, spacing, icons and animation all reverse, and Hebrew has its own indexed URL space.
2 indexed languages, 5 more selectable
Trust
The guides are named and pictured
Named guides with roles and photographs, local knowledge, Hebrew-speaking service, and the 23-year history. What separates a local operator from a reseller is people, so the site shows them.
23 years in tourism, 17+ guiding in Rio
Group travel
Group bookings get a dedicated page
Organized and private group travel gets its own destination, because a family of 4 and a coach party are not making the same decision.
A separate audience, a separate page
Experiences
Every recommendation links to a real page
Each of the 6 recommended experiences carries its own imagery, description and booking route, so cross-selling happens through content rather than a sidebar link.
6 experiences, individually built
Company
The about page identifies the operator
The company story, the team and the local promise, which matters more in travel than in almost any other category.
23 years, told properly
The client.
Rio Day Trip has run guided tours in Rio de Janeiro for over 17 years, backed by 23 years in tourism, with certified guides who actually live in the city and daily departures all year.
At a glance
The engagement, on paper.
- Client
- Rio Day Trip, guided day tours and private trips in Rio de Janeiro.
- Industry
- Travel and tourism, serving Hebrew-speaking and international visitors.
- Starting point
- A hosted website-builder template carrying real content and real rankings, but capped by the platform.
- Scope
- Complete rebuild, visual identity, information architecture, tour templates, conversion design, multilingual and RTL system, and a full SEO migration.
- Stack
- Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Framer Motion, and Embla Carousel, exported as static files.
- Languages
- English and Hebrew with their own indexed URL spaces, plus 5 more selectable in the interface.
- Migration footprint
- 182 routes built, 175 URLs mapped in the sitemap, and 51 permanent redirects.
The challenge
6 problems with the old template site.
The business had the reputation, the reviews, and the rankings. The website was the part holding it back, and rebuilding it meant putting all of that at risk.
Rankings at risk
Years of earned visibility sat on specific indexed URLs. Any careless rebuild turns those into 404s and throws the authority away.
Booking competed with content
WhatsApp was available, but it had to compete for attention with everything else on a very long page.
Tours buried in 1 page
Every tour lived as a section of the homepage, so travelers could not compare options or land directly on the trip they searched for.
Hebrew by template
Right-aligned text is not the same as a right-to-left layout. Navigation, carousels, and motion all still behaved left-to-right.
Mobile treated as secondary
The most likely visitor is a traveler holding a phone in Rio, and template responsiveness was not built around that person.
Project goals
7 goals, in order.
Each goal set up the next, and the migration constraint shaped all of them.
01
Make it beautiful and fast
Replace a template with a cinematic destination brand that loads quickly on a phone with hotel wifi.
02
Protect every ranking
Treat the existing indexed URLs as assets to be preserved, not legacy paths to tidy up.
03
Put WhatsApp everywhere
Make the booking channel reachable from any screen, at any scroll position, on any device.
04
Give each tour a real page
Turn homepage sections into structured pages that answer the questions that delay a booking.
05
Make Hebrew native
Build a true right-to-left experience rather than flipping the text alignment of a left-to-right design.
06
Design for the phone first
Assume the visitor is already travelling, on a small screen, deciding quickly.
07
Hand over an owned codebase
Leave a component-based project the business controls, instead of renting a page builder.
My strategy
The decisions I made.
Rio Day Trip earned top-3 visibility across Brazil through its own marketing. My job was to move the site without losing it, and these calls made that possible.
Never tidy a ranking URL
Old paths carried odd suffixes, dated wording, and historical spelling quirks. Changing 1 character in an indexed URL creates a 404 and discards the authority behind it, so every one was preserved exactly.
Redirect the duplicates, keep the originals
Obsolete and duplicated paths were mapped to permanent redirects instead of being deleted, so neither visitors nor crawlers ever hit a dead end.
Make WhatsApp the funnel, not a button
When the sale happens in chat, every section of the site should be able to start that chat. Booking is never more than 1 action away at any scroll position.
Prefill the message with the product
A generic "hello" wastes the first exchange. Naming the tour in the message means the conversation starts at availability and price rather than discovery.
Treat Hebrew as a layout, not alignment
True right-to-left document direction, with navigation, carousel direction, icon direction, spacing, and animation all reversed. Hebrew reads as native rather than adapted.
Ship static
A static export means no application server to fail, straightforward CDN delivery worldwide, and a previous build that can be restored instantly if a migration goes wrong.
Migration engineering
How the migration was handled.
The unglamorous work that decides whether a redesign keeps its traffic or quietly loses a year of it.
Before vs after
What actually changed.
BeforeAfter
First impressionAn image with a text overlay and little visible navigationA branded cinematic hero with proof points and 3 immediate actions
BrandTemplate appearance, platform credit in the footerA purpose-built navy, green, amber and sand identity
BookingWhatsApp competes with page content10 entry points with prefilled, tour-specific messages
Tour discoveryTours as sections of 1 long pageVisual summaries plus dedicated detail pages
Tour detailLoosely structured informationPrice, inclusions, logistics, policies, gallery, and related trips
LanguagesPrimarily HebrewIndexed English and Hebrew spaces, plus 5 selectable languages
Hebrew experienceRight-aligned templateTrue right-to-left layout, navigation, carousels and motion
OwnershipConstrained by a hosted page builderA component-based codebase the business owns
The build
The rebuild, by the numbers.
What the production build produces, and what the migration had to account for.
182Routes built
175URLs mapped
51Permanent redirects
7Languages offered
Business impact
What this gets the operator.
The ranking result is the client's own. The effects below describe what a rebuild of this kind sets up.
The company looks its age, in a good way
23 years of experience finally reads on screen, which is the difference between a local operator and a reseller.
Better conversations, not just more
Prefilled messages mean the team opens with availability instead of spending the first replies working out which tour is meant.
Built for someone already travelling
A traveler in Rio can compare tours, read the practical detail, and book from a phone without pinching or hunting.
A wider audience, properly served
English and Hebrew each have real indexed space, and 5 more languages are available for visitors who need them.
Research turns into booking
Articles, topics, and recommendations give the business a way to reach travelers months before they are ready to pay.
Room to grow
New tours, articles, and languages slot into an owned component system instead of being rebuilt inside a page builder.
Questions
The short version.
How do you rebuild a site without losing its rankings?
By treating the old URL structure as an asset instead of a mess to clean up:
- Preserve exactly: every indexed path is reproduced character for character, including odd suffixes and historical spellings.
- Redirect the rest: duplicates and obsolete paths get permanent 301s. Here that meant 51 rules.
- Declare the relationships: self-referencing canonicals, language alternates, and an x-default so nothing looks duplicated.
- Verify at the HTTP level: after cutover, every legacy URL should return a real 200 or 301, never a soft 404.
Why is WhatsApp the centre of the design?
Because that is where this business actually closes:
- Meet the behaviour: travelers already message rather than fill in forms, so the site removes friction instead of redirecting it.
- Everywhere, not once: 10 entry points across header, hero, cards, sidebar, floating control, mobile bar, and footer.
- Context included: each link prefills the tour name, so the sales team knows the product before the conversation starts.
What does "native Hebrew" actually mean?
More than right-aligned text:
- Real document direction: the page is genuinely right-to-left, not a mirrored afterthought.
- Components follow: navigation, carousel direction, icon direction, spacing, and animation all reverse.
- One typeface: Rubik covers Latin and Hebrew, so the brand looks identical in both directions.
- Its own URL space: Hebrew pages are indexed in their own right, not hidden behind a language switcher.
Why static rather than a server?
For speed and for safety:
- Faster delivery: pre-built HTML served from a CDN, which matters on hotel and mobile connections.
- Fewer failure modes: no application server sitting between the visitor and the page.
- Instant rollback: the previous build stays available as an artifact, so a bad migration is reversed in minutes.
Can you migrate my site without losing traffic?
That is exactly the risky part of a redesign, and where most of the care goes:
- Baseline first: export existing landing pages, queries, and positions before anything changes.
- Map every URL: crawl what is indexed today and account for each one in the new build.
- Verify after cutover: check redirects, canonicals, and sitemaps on the live host, then monitor daily for the first week.
- Talk to us: book a free call and I will look at what you would be risking.
Keep exploring
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Your turn
Planning a redesign? Keep your rankings.
A rebuild is the riskiest thing you can do to a site that already ranks. I plan the migration before I design a single screen.