ALL WORK

CONCEPT 06 ◦ HORSEBOXES

FVM
HORSEBOXES

Business
FVM Horseboxes
Trade
Horsebox builds, repairs and MOTs
Patch
Millbrook, Bedfordshire
Status
Concept ◦ not commissioned
Scope
Design ◦ copy ◦ build
Year
2026

THE PROBLEM

A Millbrook coachbuilder making custom horseboxes for two to six horses, with boxes that sell for tens of thousands. The website last changed in 2017. It runs on a WordPress release and a version of PHP that no longer get security updates, and without a working certificate, so every browser flags it as Not secure before a visitor has seen a single build.

Forty-two photographs of real boxes sat in one long unlabelled gallery, and the page title and the page itself disagreed about which town the workshop is in.

The old FVM Horseboxes website: a WordPress theme with a header photo, three service boxes and an introduction The FVM Horseboxes concept: a silver horsebox beside the headline, with a maker's plate carrying the workshop's details

WHAT WE DID

A coachbuilder rivets a maker's plate inside every box, so the site starts with one: the facts from their old site stamped on brushed aluminium, over a photo of one of their own builds.

  • Spec your box. Pick the base, the number of horses, the living, GRP or aluminium, the cab and a colour. The side view redraws with every choice and turns into a ready-written email to the workshop. It says clearly that it is a starting point, not a quote.
  • Four builds, not one pile of photos. All 42 of their photographs, sorted by the box they belong to, each on a strip in that box's paint colour with a full-screen viewer.
  • The workshop on a job card. MOTs, servicing, bodywork, refurbishments and second-hand sales, in their own words, ticked off one by one.
  • Their colours and their logo. The charcoal and yellow of the old theme and the racehorse and jockey mark, kept as they were.
  • Secure, and nothing to patch. HTTPS, one fast static page, and no WordPress or plugins waiting for updates.
  • Two numbers, one tap each. Workshop and mobile, with a call bar pinned to the bottom of a phone screen.
The spec tool: choices on the right, the side view of the box redrawing on the left
Spec a box and watch it redraw
Built in Millbrook: each build with its paint colour and a strip of photographs
Every build, in its own paint colour
The old FVM HORSEBOXES website on a phone
BEFORE
The FVM HORSEBOXES concept on a phone
AFTER

THE RESULT

The first thing a buyer sees is a finished box instead of a browser warning, and the next is a way to describe the box they want. Everything on it came from their own site: the photographs, the services, the two testimonials and the address.

FVM Horseboxes didn't commission this, so it's shown as a concept: a design we built unprompted to show what their site could be, using their own wording and photographs.

See the concept ▸

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