Client: Express Blinds & Curtains
Industry: Made-to-measure blinds, curtains and shutters
Location: Barnsley, South Yorkshire
Services: Web design, Webflow development, content structure, SEO foundations, digital marketing and social media
Platform: Webflow
Timeline: 2 months
The short version
Express Blinds & Curtains is a long-established Barnsley business specialising in made-to-measure blinds, curtains and shutters for homes and commercial properties.
Founded in 2000, the company has grown from a local window furnishings business into a team serving residential customers across South Yorkshire and delivering commercial projects throughout the UK. Much of what they sell is manufactured at their own Barnsley production facility.
The challenge was to create a website that better reflected the scale and quality of the business, made a large product range easier to understand, and gave residential and commercial customers clear routes through the site.
Over two months, we redesigned and rebuilt the website in Webflow, creating a cleaner, more visual digital presence that gives Express Blinds & Curtains a much stronger platform for local residential enquiries and nationwide commercial work.
Alongside the website, we also supported the wider digital presence of the business through social media and digital marketing, helping create a more consistent brand across different customer touchpoints.
About Express Blinds & Curtains
Express Blinds & Curtains has been operating for more than 25 years from its base in Barnsley.
Founded by Jeff Dale in 2000, the business has built its reputation around made-to-measure products, practical advice and a personal service from initial measurement through to installation.
Its Barnsley showroom and production facility gives customers somewhere to see fabrics, products and finishes in person, while also allowing the team to manufacture the majority of its blinds and curtains in-house.
The company manufactures much of its product range internally, including curtains and Roman, roller, cellular, Perfect Fit, roof, vertical and Allusion blinds.
For residential customers, Express covers Barnsley and the wider South Yorkshire area, including Sheffield, Doncaster and Rotherham, as well as surrounding areas such as Wakefield and Huddersfield. Its commercial team works on projects nationwide.
That created an interesting website challenge: this wasn't simply a local blinds website.
The site needed to work for somebody looking for new blinds for their living room in Barnsley and for somebody responsible for window coverings across a large commercial property portfolio.
The challenge
Express Blinds & Curtains had a strong established business, a substantial product range and years of experience behind it.
The website needed to communicate all of that without overwhelming visitors.
A large range needed a clearer structure
Express offers far more than one or two types of blinds.
The range includes roller, Roman, Perfect Fit, cellular, Venetian, vertical, Allusion and roof blinds alongside curtains and shutters.
For somebody inside the industry, those distinctions are obvious. For a homeowner trying to decide what would work best in a kitchen, bedroom or conservatory, they aren't necessarily so clear.
We needed to make the product range easy to browse while still providing enough information for customers who already knew exactly what they wanted.
Residential and commercial customers needed different journeys
Express serves two quite different audiences.
A residential customer might want inspiration, help choosing a style, information about fitting and an easy way to arrange a home consultation.
A commercial customer is more likely to be thinking about specifications, multiple locations, project delivery, timescales and reliability.
Trying to force both audiences through exactly the same pages would make the experience less useful for everyone.
The website needed to show the work
Window furnishings are visual.
A list of product specifications can explain what a blind does, but people ultimately want to see what the finished result looks like in a real room.
The website therefore needed to make completed projects and photography a central part of the experience rather than treating images as decoration.
The site needed to reflect the actual business
Express isn't simply reselling generic products online.
The business has its own Barnsley showroom and production facility, manufactures much of its range itself, measures and installs products, and has more than two decades of experience.
Those are major reasons to choose the company, so they needed to be much more visible online.
Our approach
Starting with the customer journeys
We began by looking at the different reasons somebody might arrive on the website.
Some visitors already know they want roller blinds.
Others know they want something for their bifold doors but don't know which product is suitable.
Some want to browse ideas.
Others simply want to arrange a home visit.
And commercial customers have another set of requirements altogether.
That led us to build the site around clear routes rather than expecting every visitor to follow the same journey.
Residential customers can explore the different product categories, browse completed work and then arrange a consultation.
Commercial visitors have their own route into the site, allowing Express to communicate its capability to deliver larger projects throughout the UK.
Structure and content
One of the biggest jobs was organising a substantial amount of information without making the website feel complicated.
We created dedicated areas for the major product categories, giving products such as roller blinds, Roman blinds, Perfect Fit blinds, shutters and curtains room to be explained properly.
Each page could then answer the questions relevant to that particular product rather than relying on one generic "blinds" page to do everything.
That also gave us a much stronger foundation for search.
Someone searching specifically for made-to-measure roller blinds in South Yorkshire is looking for something different from somebody searching for shutters or commercial blinds.
Dedicated pages allow the website to respond much more closely to that intent.
We also separated the residential and commercial sides of the business so each audience could quickly find information relevant to them.
Making completed work part of the website
For a business like Express, photographs of real installations are some of the strongest marketing material available.
Rather than hiding those photographs away, we made completed work an important part of the website.
Visitors can browse projects and explore work across residential and commercial projects, different product types and locations throughout Yorkshire and further afield.
This does several jobs at once.
It gives potential customers ideas.
It demonstrates the quality of the finished work.
It shows that Express is regularly completing real projects.
And it provides valuable local evidence for people searching for a supplier in their area.
[Insert screenshot of the Work / Projects section]
Design
We wanted the new website to feel established and professional without losing the personality of a local Yorkshire business.
The products needed to take centre stage, so the design makes generous use of large interior photography, clean layouts and space around the content rather than trying to squeeze every product and message onto the screen at once.
Navigation was kept straightforward so visitors could quickly move between blinds, curtains, shutters, residential services, commercial services and examples of previous work.
Calls to action were also made much clearer.
Someone who likes what they see shouldn't have to search through the site to work out what happens next.
The website gives customers clear opportunities to contact the team, visit the Barnsley showroom or arrange a consultation.
[Insert before-and-after homepage screenshots]
Built in Webflow
We chose Webflow for the new Express Blinds & Curtains website because it gave us the flexibility to create a highly visual, custom website without being restricted by an off-the-shelf template.
It also gave us a strong foundation for performance, responsive design and ongoing content management.
The site was designed to work smoothly across desktop, tablet and mobile, with layouts adapting naturally to different screen sizes.
Webflow also made it possible to create structured content for areas such as products and completed projects, helping keep the website manageable as more work is added over time.
Key features included:
- Dedicated sections for residential and commercial customers
- Individual pages for the main blind, curtain and shutter ranges
- A browsable portfolio of completed projects
- Clear appointment and enquiry routes
- Responsive mobile layouts
- Local SEO foundations
- Clear presentation of the Barnsley showroom and service area
- A Webflow CMS structure for ongoing content and project updates
- A flexible foundation for future website development
Showing what makes Express different
An important part of the project was making the website specific to Express rather than producing something that could belong to any blinds company.
That meant bringing genuine strengths of the business into the content.
Over 25 years of experience.
Express has been operating since 2000.
Manufacturing in Barnsley.
The majority of its blinds and curtains are manufactured at its own South Yorkshire facility, giving the team greater control over quality and production.
A physical showroom.
Customers can visit the Barnsley showroom to compare products, fabrics and finishes rather than making a decision entirely from photographs online.
Measuring and fitting.
The customer journey doesn't stop at choosing a product. Express provides a made-to-measure service through to professional installation.
Residential and commercial experience.
The business serves homeowners throughout South Yorkshire while also delivering commercial installations around the UK.
These aren't generic marketing claims.
They're tangible things the business already does well. Our job was to make them easier for potential customers to see.
Local SEO foundations
Local search was another important consideration.
Express is based in Barnsley but serves customers across a much wider area of South Yorkshire.
The website therefore needed to make that geography clear to both visitors and search engines without filling every page with repetitive lists of town names.
Barnsley remains central to the business, while the content naturally communicates its wider coverage across Sheffield, Doncaster, Rotherham, Wakefield, Huddersfield and surrounding areas.
Individual products also have dedicated pages, creating opportunities for much more specific searches than a single generic services page could target.
The aim was to give Google a clearer understanding of what Express offers, where the business is based and the areas it serves, while keeping the content useful for real people first.
Social media and digital support
The website was one part of the wider digital presence we worked on with Express Blinds & Curtains.
We also supported the business with social media and digital marketing, helping make sure the brand felt consistent beyond the website itself.
For a visual business like Express, social media provides an ideal place to showcase finished installations, products, fabrics, new ranges and examples of work carried out for customers.
It also gives the business another way to stay visible locally and keep its work in front of potential customers who may not be ready to buy immediately.
By combining the new website with ongoing digital and social content, Express has a stronger foundation for presenting the business consistently wherever potential customers find it online.
Making appointments easier
A website like this ultimately has a job to do.
It needs to turn somebody browsing blinds or curtains into somebody talking to Express.
We therefore gave appointment booking a clear place within the customer journey.
Customers can arrange a free home survey by contacting the team or submitting their details online, while those who prefer to see products first can visit the company's Barnsley showroom.
Reducing the number of steps between "I like that" and "I'd like somebody to come and measure" was an important part of the thinking behind the site.
The result
After two months of design and development, Express Blinds & Curtains had a digital presence that much more accurately reflected the business it had become.
Instead of simply listing products, the new Webflow website gives residential and commercial customers clear journeys through the business.
Visitors can explore the full product range, view completed installations, understand what makes Express different and quickly move from browsing to arranging an appointment.
The visual style better reflects the quality of the products and installations, while the website structure gives the company a stronger foundation for local search and future growth.
Just as importantly, the website now works alongside Express's wider social media and digital marketing rather than existing as a standalone piece of the business.
What we learned
Express Blinds & Curtains was a good example of why website design isn't just about making something look newer.
The bigger challenge was information.
There was a substantial range of products, two very different audiences, numerous geographical markets and more than two decades of experience to communicate.
The solution was to make the website simpler for the person using it, even though the business behind it is relatively complex.
It also reinforced something we see regularly when working with established local businesses: some of the strongest website content already exists inside the company.
The years of experience.
The workshop.
The people.
The products being made.
The showroom.
The completed installations.
The places you've worked.
Those things are much more persuasive than generic marketing language.
Our job was to bring them together and make them easy to discover.
Could your website be doing more?
If you've built a good local business but your website no longer reflects it, we'd be happy to take a look.
Whether your site feels dated, has become difficult to manage or simply isn't generating the enquiries it should, we'll start by understanding the business and what your customers actually need from the website.
No generic packages and no unnecessary sales pitch.
Just a conversation about where you are now and what a better website could do for you.
Start a project with Two Pixels →