Leighton Fine Art
A long-standing partnership with one of the UK's most respected fine art dealers - a ground-up rebuild that halved hosting costs and now outperforms every competitor on Core Web Vitals.
- Client
- Nick Leighton, Leighton Fine Art Ltd
- Industry
- Fine art dealing
- What we do
- Design, build, performance, care
- SEO partner
- Forank
A serious collection that deserved a serious website.
Leighton Fine Art deals in 19th and 20th century British and European paintings, with a catalogue that runs to hundreds of works. Collectors browse by artist, by period and by price, and many buy having only ever seen a painting on screen.
That makes the website the gallery. It has to load fast, show the work beautifully and give buyers the confidence to enquire.
Paying for a server the site did not need - and still loading slowly.
When Nick first came to us the site sat on an expensive dedicated server that was doing very little for it. Pages were sluggish, image-heavy templates dragged Core Web Vitals down, and the running costs were out of proportion to the value delivered. There was no SEO strategy to speak of.
- Overpriced dedicated server
- Slow, image-heavy pages
- Poor Core Web Vitals
- No SEO strategy
Rebuilt from the ground up, then tuned for the way collectors actually browse.
We redesigned the site in-house with a refined, gallery-style aesthetic and rebuilt it on a lean custom WordPress theme. Server bloat went; responsive images, lazy loading and aggressive caching came in.
Alongside the rebuild we built the tools that set the gallery apart: View on Wall, which lets a collector see a painting at scale on their own wall; Be the First to Know, which alerts registered collectors when matching work arrives; and an artist A-Z with profiles and filterable collections. We then brought in our SEO partner Forank to drive organic visibility, and the site sits on our Protect plan for updates, security and monitoring.
- Design & UX
- Custom WordPress rebuild
- View on Wall tool
- Be the First to Know alerts
- Artist A-Z browser
- Performance optimisation
- SEO collaboration with Forank
- Protect care plan
Half the hosting bill. The fastest gallery site in the market.
Hosting costs fell by 50% and pages now load in under two seconds. Leighton Fine Art’s Core Web Vitals beat every competitor we measure, and organic enquiries are growing through the work with Forank. Nick has one team for design, development, hosting and honest advice – a partner rather than a supplier.
The results
Ember Web completely transformed my website and my costs. They rebuilt the site from scratch, halved my hosting bill, and the performance now beats every other gallery in the market. Dan and the team genuinely care - they're not just a supplier, they're a partner I trust completely.
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