Not Every Project Needs to Be a Rebuild: A Focused Calculator Redesign

A lot of the case studies we publish are about big projects. Full website rebuilds. Multi-phase custom software builds. Six month engagements with weekly updates and Figma files thicker than a small phone book.

Those projects are real and we love doing them, but they are not the whole of what we do, and they are not always the right answer. A meaningful share of our work is the opposite: small, focused projects where one piece of a website is dragging down the rest of the business, and the right move is to fix that one thing well, not to rebuild everything around it.

This is the story of one of those projects.

The brief

The client was a pool cover manufacturer based in Canada, selling premium thermal pool and hot tub covers across North America. They came to us in late July 2025 with a quote request for general website maintenance. Their busy season started on September 1, so the work needed to be done before then.

While reviewing the site during the quote process, we spotted that their quote calculator, the tool a prospect uses to size and price a custom cover, was eating leads. The form was multi-step, included friction-heavy fields like a photo upload, and was hosted by a third party the client was paying separately to maintain. We flagged it in our recommendations.

The owner initially declined the calculator work. Then he watched the Loom video we had attached to the quote, which walked through the analytics that prompted the recommendation. The next morning, his reply: "We were SO impressed. Thank you for the time you took to explain this all. Let's go ahead with the entire package for both sites, including the calculator."

What the analytics showed before we touched the design

A calculator is a funnel inside a funnel. People arrive at it, they start filling it in, and either they finish or they drop off. The interesting question is always at which step the drop off happens.

For this client, the drop off was concentrated in the steps that demanded the most from the user: multiple screens to click through, a photo upload that asked them to dig up an image of their pool, and a form length that felt longer than the price discovery was worth. That gave us a clear hypothesis: shorten the path, cut the photo upload, simplify the visual experience, and the completion rate should rise.

Two design options, presented honestly

We did not walk in with a recommendation. We built two prototypes and let the client choose.

Option one was a multi-step version. Cleaner than what they had, but still broken into logical steps. Option two was a single-page version, every input on one screen, with visual selectors for cover shape and size.

We built both in Figma, with screenshots assembled on a Figma JamBoard for side by side comparison, and an interactive prototype using Figma Make so the client could click through the actual flow rather than just looking at static screens.

The client picked the single page version. Their reasoning, in their own words: "We feel that the inputs are minimal and easy to navigate this way." That matched the analytics hypothesis exactly.

In the same email, they made three other small but meaningful calls:

Remove the photo upload entirely, agreeing it was "hardly of benefit to us but perhaps a cumbersome step for potential clients."

Change the bottom CTA from "Get Quote" to "Add to Cart." This was a quiet but important shift. It moved the calculator from being a marketing tool to being a sales tool.

Add a clearly visible "Questions?" panel with a phone number and email address, so any prospect who hit hesitation in the middle of the form had a way to get a human on the line.

Every one of those decisions reduced friction or added trust. None of them required us to talk the client into anything.

What we built, and how fast

Total turnaround from confirmed scope to live calculator was roughly one and a half weeks of development, on top of about a week of design and prototyping. The full project from quote acceptance to launch came in just under five weeks, well ahead of the September 1 deadline.

The calculator was rebuilt directly inside the existing WordPress site, with the design coded by our development team rather than re-skinning the previous third party tool. That decision had two benefits. First, the client was no longer paying a third party for a feature that should live inside their own site. Second, when they later want to raise prices or adjust pricing logic, they call us and we change a value in the code, rather than waiting on an external vendor's queue. The calculator feeds directly into the site's existing PayPal checkout, so a prospect can go from sizing their cover to paying for it in a single uninterrupted flow.

The trust moment that grew the engagement

The strongest endorsement came not from the project wrap email, but from a moment in the middle of the build. After receiving our initial Loom video explaining the optimization recommendations, the owner wrote: "We were SO impressed. I appreciate your ownership of the projects and I look forward to partnering up with you as we go forward."

That email was when the project went from a maintenance contract to a real partnership. The hour or so we had invested in producing the Loom and writing thoughtful recommendations had returned a level of trust that turned into months of follow-on work, including video production, Meta and Google ad management, and call tracking integration.

The lesson there is one we apply on every project: explaining your reasoning out loud is not a cost. It is the work.

The broader program, and where credit belongs

In the months after the calculator launched, the wider engagement (the calculator plus paid ads, organic video content, and call tracking) coincided with the client's revenue running roughly 40 percent above the same period the prior year. We would not pin that lift on the calculator alone. The ad campaigns drove cold traffic, the video content built value before the click, the call tracking helped feedback loop the campaigns, and the calculator was the conversion endpoint where prospects landed.

What we can say cleanly is that the calculator was the first piece of work. It was small, focused, and delivered well, and that opened the door to everything else.

When a small focused project is the right answer

Not every business problem needs a full rebuild. A few clear signals that suggest a focused fix is what you actually need:

Your website is generally working but one specific page or feature is underperforming the rest. You have a hard external deadline and a full rebuild would not be finished in time. A third party tool is costing you ongoing money and getting in the way. Your funnel math says people are dropping off at a specific, identifiable moment.

In all of those cases, a small focused project is not a compromise. It is the right tool.

What this means for your business

If you have been told you need a full rebuild but something in your gut says the whole site is not actually broken, get a second opinion. Sometimes the conversion problem is one form, one page, or one missing piece of trust at the moment of purchase. Fixing that one thing well is faster, cheaper, and often more impactful than a full overhaul.

If you would like us to take a look at where your site is leaking leads or money, email us at hello@nerdyspider.com or call the office at 587-417-5870. We will tell you honestly whether the right move is a small focused project or something larger.

‍