CrossFit 17: From a Difficult Handover to Month-on-Month Growth

by Ash · 23 Aug 2026

This client is CrossFit 17, a fitness and coaching business built around member results and a genuine community, not just a website. Like a lot of small businesses, they'd invested in a website once and assumed it would simply keep working for them — until it didn't.

Their previous website provider wasn't acting quickly when changes were requested, the kind of basic responsiveness you'd expect as standard. Worse, their domain renewal was effectively being held to ransom, with excessive costs demanded just to keep control of their own web address. On top of that, there was no support for SEO or AEO (visibility in AI-powered search) to actually help the business grow. The site existed, but it wasn't doing any real work for them.

They needed a partner who could recover what had been broken, rebuild what wasn't working, and actually take ownership of growth going forward — not just hand over a finished website and disappear.

A Full Recovery Built Around Reliability

Rather than a quick patch job, we treated this as a genuine rebuild: recover what was broken, fix what was holding the business back, and put a real growth system in its place. Some of the highlights so far include:

• A fully recovered, working email system, after a broken handover left it down
• A completely rebuilt website with a clean, proper handover this time
• 76% growth in site sessions and 107% growth in unique visitors over 30 days
• New visibility on AI search platforms including ChatGPT and Gemini, tracked for the first time
• Increased bookings, revenue, and exposure for CrossFit 17's classes

Here's how we did it.

Fixing What Was Actually Broken

Their Website & Email Problems

Before working with us, CrossFit 17 was dealing with a genuinely difficult situation, not just an outdated website:

• Their previous provider was slow to act on basic change requests
• Their domain renewal was being held to ransom, with excessive fees demanded to keep control of it
• Their email system had broken down entirely during the handover process
• No ongoing SEO or AEO support existed to help the business actually grow visibility

"I can't thank Ash enough for the support I've had redoing my website and, more importantly, getting my emails back up and running after what was a very complex and difficult handover from my previous provider. What could have been a really stressful and disruptive situation was handled with patience, clear communication, and genuine problem-solving. The end result is a website I'm really happy with and a fully functioning email system that I can finally rely on again."

— Etham Yates, CrossFit 17

Our Solution: A Clean Rebuild & Recovery

We treated the recovery and the rebuild as one connected job, not two separate fixes:

• Rebuilt the website properly, with a full, clean handover this time — no more being held hostage by a previous provider
• Recovered and rebuilt the email system that had broken during the original handover
• Took over ongoing SEO and AEO work as part of our Website Growth Plan, to actually grow visibility, not just maintain the site
• Set up and supported Google Advertising to bring in new enquiries directly
• Took on the behind-the-scenes admin via our CRM lead capture setup, so CrossFit 17 could focus on coaching and members, not website management

The Results

More Traffic, More Visibility

Over the last 30 days, site sessions grew 76% to 990, and unique visitors grew 107% to 763. Direct traffic rose 64% to 390 sessions, with paid Google traffic contributing a further 300 sessions on top of that.

Not every number moved the same direction — organic Google search traffic dipped 22% this period, even as overall traffic more than doubled thanks to direct visits and paid campaigns picking up the slack. We're not going to pretend every metric is a straight line up; a genuine, honest picture matters more than a perfect-looking one.

Growing Visibility in AI Search

As search behaviour shifts, we've also focused on making sure CrossFit 17 shows up where their members are actually looking — including inside AI platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini. This wasn't being tracked or optimised for at all under the previous provider.

User queries reaching CrossFit 17 via AI platforms grew 59% to 116 in the last 30 days, with visibility scores of 40% on ChatGPT and 45% on Gemini. This is a genuinely new growth channel that simply didn't exist for the business before.

Real Business Impact, Not Just Analytics

Alongside the numbers, CrossFit 17 has seen an increase in bookings and revenue, and more exposure for their classes — the actual point of all this, beyond the dashboards themselves.

How Else We've Helped

Beyond the rebuild itself, taking on the ongoing SEO, AEO, advertising and CRM admin has meant CrossFit 17 no longer has to think about their website as a separate, stressful project. It's become something that just works quietly in the background, freeing them up to focus on coaching and members.

Summary

CrossFit 17 came to us after a genuinely difficult experience with a previous provider — a slow, unresponsive handover and a domain effectively held to ransom. Since the rebuild, site sessions are up 76% and unique visitors up 107% over 30 days, alongside new visibility on AI search platforms, increased bookings, and more exposure for their classes.

FAQs

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