Building Renatus from scratch: what the early numbers show

A website built around the work

Renatus brings together service pages, pricing, project case studies, articles, and free business tools. A visitor can explore custom software, internal tools, customer portals, and automation, see examples of completed work, then describe the problem they need help solving.

Building the site from scratch gave me control over how those pieces fit together. The purpose was to make the studio’s work easier to understand and give each visitor a useful next step.

01 Services and project scope

Service pages and pricing explain the kinds of problems Renatus handles and where a project starts.

02 Evidence from real projects

Case studies connect the work to actual business needs, from mediation scheduling to insurance inquiries and shuttle operations.

03 Tools that help people prepare

Website assessments, cost reviews, and planning tools help visitors organize their questions before contacting me.

04 A measurable inquiry path

Forms and confirmation pages connect a visitor’s next step to the records I need to review and follow up.

Those parts create different things to measure: whether Google displays a page, whether someone visits, whether they use a tool, and whether a submitted inquiry is worth following up. Treating those as separate outcomes makes the reporting useful.

The first search baseline

From August 18 through October 13, 2026, Google Search Console recorded 652 impressions and 12 clicks for Renatus. The reported click-through rate was 1.84%, with an average position of 46.25.

August 18 is the first date with search activity returned in this audit. It is the beginning of this reporting window, not a claim about the website’s launch date.

An impression records a result appearing in Google Search under Search Console’s counting rules. It is different from a website visit. Likewise, the 12 search clicks are not 12 inquiries.

The search data showed exposure around topics including custom software development in San Antonio, website maintenance, WordPress versus static websites, and shuttle software. The homepage received 10 recorded clicks; About and Pricing received one each. The sample is too small to judge the whole content strategy, but it establishes a starting point.

Average position improved while clicks stayed flat

Two equal 28-day periods show why a ranking number needs context.

The reported average position improved by about 27.4 positions. At the same time, impressions decreased by 32.2% and clicks stayed at six. The average placement of the results Google showed improved; search click volume had not grown between these periods.

Average position also changes when the mix of queries and pages changes. These figures do not prove that a redesign or any particular edit caused an improvement. With this little traffic, a few clicks can substantially change a percentage.

Separate public-site activity from testing

For the same August 18–October 13 period, Google Analytics recorded 338 sessions, 196 active users, and 674 page views on the public Renatus hostname. Of those sessions, 13 were classified as Organic Search: 12 from Google and one from Bing. Direct was the largest reported channel.

The unfiltered property also contained 370 page views on a local development address and five on a Netlify preview hostname. Those visits were excluded from the production-site figures above.

A production hostname alone does not prove that every visit came from a prospective customer. The public-site data still includes 12 sessions attributed to a localhost referral, and it may include my own browsing, repeat testing, or automated traffic.

Check the setup before relying on the report

The October 15 audit found a misspelling in the Analytics stream’s website address and a regular case-study page submitted to Search Console as if it were a sitemap. I corrected the stream address and removed the invalid sitemap entry. The actual XML sitemap was already working and listed 50 URLs at the time of the audit.

Google’s URL inspection showed the homepage, Pricing page, and custom-software service page as indexed, with matching declared and Google-selected canonical URLs. The coverage report showed 21 indexed pages as of its October 11 update. A sitemap URL count is not an indexed-page count.

Analytics was already linked to the correct Search Console property, and generate_lead was already marked as a key event when inspected. The historical report contained two such events on August 22 and zero recorded key events for the reporting period. I have not reconciled those events with inquiry records, so I am not presenting them as two prospects or using them to calculate a lead conversion rate.

The website tracking update is now deployed. It limits Analytics loading to Renatus’s public HTTPS domains, adds a persistent option to exclude my own browser, and requires the form endpoint to accept a submission before preparing its lead event. It also guards against duplicate submission attempts and repeated confirmation-page visits.

Local checks covered failed requests, duplicate submissions, and confirmation-page refreshes. A controlled live submission and a check against the stored form record remain the next steps for verifying the full inquiry path. The update does not retroactively remove testing activity from historical reports.

Use the baseline to decide what to improve

The next useful milestone is a reliable connection between recorded inquiries and actual conversations. My priorities are to:

• Verify the full inquiry path. Match a labeled test submission to its form record and Analytics event, then keep it separate from customer inquiries.
• Review pages that appear but receive few clicks. Look at the searches, page content, and search appearance together before deciding what to change.
• Connect useful content to the next step. Give readers a relevant tool, service page, or inquiry path instead of leaving each page isolated.
• Compare complete reporting periods. Watch search clicks, recorded website activity, and verified inquiries together, using the same dates and filters.

Building Renatus from scratch also means owning the work after launch: keeping the pages useful, checking the measurement, and following the evidence as it develops. These early numbers give me a starting point for that work.