Schwimmschule Mantarochen: a relaunch across eight locations
Andreas Schadt teaches children and adults to swim at eight locations between the Rhineland and the Middle Rhine. Only his website hardly said anything about it any more. We changed that.
When parents take their child to its first swimming lesson, they are putting it into someone else's hands. That is why a swim school lives on trust, and Andreas Schadt has built up that trust over years: as a diploma-qualified swimming teacher with a DLRG teaching licence (the DLRG is the German Life Saving Association), and with courses from Bornheim via Bad Honnef and Unkel all the way down to Boppard on the Middle Rhine.
Only his website said nothing about any of it. It ran on a large hosting company's website builder, looked like a thousand others and made things unnecessarily hard for parents on their phones. Andreas knew that better than anyone. When he wrote to us, his wish was refreshingly clear: keep what works, but thoroughly modernise the site, with a clear path to booking a course and better visibility at every one of his locations.
What is also nice about this story is how it started: Andreas did not find us through an advert, but through the website of Schwimmschule Nemo. He saw it and wanted something like it. There is no better compliment in our line of work.
Where we started
The old site was not badly maintained, it had simply reached the end of what it could do. The courses were on it, and there was a contact form too. But a mother searching on her phone one evening for swimming lessons for her daughter first had to work her way through the site before she found what she wanted. And the site did not look like the business that is actually behind it.
There was also something that is easy to overlook from the outside: eight locations are eight different audiences. Someone who lives in Unkel is looking for a course in Unkel, not somewhere along the Rhine. A single page with a list of places in the running text cannot do that.
The job was therefore a genuine website relaunch: take along everything that works, rethink the presentation and the technology.
What has changed
The new site starts with what makes this swim school special: Andreas himself. His photo is on the homepage, next to his qualifications, which used to get lost in the running text: diploma-qualified swimming teacher, qualified swimming sports leader, DLRG teaching licence, Lifeguard Instructor. Exactly the details parents want to see before they sign up their child.
Around that, a design that suits the water: calm, deep blue areas, the manta ray from the logo as a recurring motif, and real photos from the courses instead of website builder stock images.
The most important change, though, is in the path to booking. The course list became a course finder: choose a location, choose a type of course, see what can be booked. Courses, locations, badges, guides and FAQ each have their own section, and the most important button has the same label across the whole site: secure your course place. All of it was built for phones first, because most parents search in the evening on the sofa, not at a desk.
Being found where the courses take place
Andreas's most important wish was local visibility: anyone searching for swimming lessons in Bornheim or a swim school in Bad Honnef should find him.
That is why each of the eight locations now has its own section on the site, with the courses that actually take place there. The old addresses redirect cleanly to the new ones, and Google Search Console shows how the site is being found.
There is one thing we tell every client honestly, and it belongs here too: visibility on Google does not appear on the day of the switch, it grows over weeks. What a relaunch can do is lay the foundation for it. That is exactly what happened.
The unspectacular details
Two things from this project matter more to us than any design decision, even though they do not appear in any screenshot.
The rating badge on the homepage shows the swim school's genuine Google rating and links to the profile, where anyone can check it. A claimed number without evidence would be the opposite of the trust this business lives on.
And during the move, we checked the rights to every single image. It is easy to carry over photos from a website builder whose origin nobody knows any more, and that is exactly where cease-and-desist letters come from later. The existing images were catalogued, and the course photos now all come from the swim school itself. Unspectacular, but exactly the kind of work people pay us for.
If your website has aged in a similar way: the page on website relaunches explains how we go about it, or you can write to us directly, just like Andreas.
Frequently asked questions
Was the old website thrown out completely?
No, that was expressly not the brief. The content, the courses and everything that worked were kept; the design, structure and technology are new. That is exactly what distinguishes a relaunch from starting again from scratch.
Why separate pages for each location?
Because that is how people search. Parents do not look for a swim school somewhere, but for swimming lessons in their town. A dedicated location page with the real courses there is the most honest answer to that search, for Google and for the parents.
Was the site offline during the switch?
No. The new site was built in parallel and only switched over once it was finished, including redirects from the old addresses.
Would a relaunch like this work for my business?
Very likely. The approach is not limited to swim schools: keep what works, renew the presentation and technology, build local visibility in a targeted way. How we go about it is explained on the page about website relaunches, and in a conversation we will tell you honestly whether a relaunch is worthwhile for you or whether a refresh is enough.
Related pages
“I can recommend WEBinnovision without any reservation. From the first discussion to the finished website, working with Bastian and Yusuf was simply excellent. What impressed me most was the speed, how easy they were to reach and their technical expertise.”
“I can only recommend working with Basti and Yusuf from WEBinnovision with all my heart! ⭐️ Right from our first short meeting, the two of them immediately understood my vision, my wishes and above all the requirements of my swim school.”
Could your website do more too?
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