Card Imaging: about 20 thin pages, rebuilt into a 415-page product catalog.
An authorized ID card printer dealer, family-run since 1984, had four decades of expertise and a website that showed almost none of it. I rebuilt it as a hand-coded catalog and resource site with guided product finders and a lanyard designer.
ID card printing is a specialized, technical corner of B2B. Buyers aren’t browsing. They’re solving a specific problem: which printer prints the badge they need, which ribbon fits that printer, which blank card is compatible, and who can service the machine when it goes down.
Card Imaging has been answering those questions since 1984. Based in Woodridge, IL, they’re a family-run authorized Fargo, Magicard, and Evolis dealer and service center. They sell ID card printers, ribbons, cards, and HID access credentials, and they program credentials, repair printers on their own bench, and print cards for customers. The expertise was never the problem. The website was.
01 The problem: a catalog business without a catalog
Before the rebuild, the website was about 17 to 20 thin pages, most of them a few sentences long. The homepage had a heading, five image tiles, and no product information at all. For a company that sells dozens of printers and hundreds of ribbon, card, and credential options, that is a brochure with a phone number on it.
The old site had the problems a specialist business runs into once it outgrows a starter website:
- No product catalog: printers, ribbons, and cards were not listed as products a buyer could browse or compare, so every price meant a phone call or an email.
- No compatibility guidance: the hardest question in this business, which ribbon or card works with which printer, had no answer on the site.
- Forty years of knowledge, none of it online: nothing on the site could rank in search or teach a first-time buyer.
- Almost no search footprint: in a four-week window before launch, Google Search Console shows the site appeared for 85 different searches across 14 pages, and nearly every click came from people already searching for the company’s name.
02 What I built: a 415-page catalog and resource site
I rebuilt the site from the ground up on WordPress with a custom, hand-built theme. Pages are generated from structured product data, so hundreds of pages stay consistent and can be updated from one source instead of one page at a time. The site launched on August 11, 2026, and today has 415 pages in its sitemap.
A real product catalog
There are 84 product pages for printers, ribbons, cards, credentials, and supplies, grouped into collections with filters by brand and type, plus 14 pages that list the supplies for each printer model. Product pages show photos, specifications, and prices. Card Imaging does not take payment on the website today: the Buy it Now button hands off to the company’s Amazon listings, and staff take orders by phone. That matches how they sell now, and the catalog is structured so a cart and checkout can be added later.
Guided product finders
Most buyers do not know model numbers, so the site asks them plain questions instead. The printer finder asks four questions, such as how many cards they print and whether they print one side or both, and shows only the printers that fit. The prox card finder sends standard credential combinations to the right product and everything else to a programming quote. The ribbon finder takes a printer brand and model and returns the exact ribbon part number.
A lanyard designer
The lanyard builder walks a customer through eight steps, from print method and color to width and material, with a live preview. Customers can download a proof, and the Send My Design button emails the proof and their logo to a sales rep and logs the request, so custom orders arrive with everything the team needs.
Industry, local, and service pages
ID printing means something different to a school, a hospital, a government office, and an event. The site has 11 industry pages and a hub, service pages for repair, programming, and card printing, and 186 local pages for printer sales, card printing, and printer repair in communities across northern Illinois.
A resource library
Around the catalog sits the reference material this niche rewards: a 57-term glossary, 11 buyer guides, a blog, and a video library with 51 how-to and training videos in one place. It earns trust before the sale and answers support questions after it.
Quotes and leads that reach the right person
Quote requests are routed to the right staff member based on what the customer needs, and each request is stored as well as emailed. Software downloads ask for a short registration first, which gives the sales team a record of who downloaded what.
03 How it was built
- Generated from data: product, category, and compatibility pages come from a structured product list, so a change to the data flows through to every page that uses it.
- Built for search: unique titles and descriptions, product structured data, XML sitemaps, and redirects from every old page address to its new home.
- Kept light: images were compressed and resized during the build. The homepage went from 4.51 MB to 1.08 MB, and the printer catalog page from 9.85 MB to 1.12 MB.
- A controlled launch: the full site was built and checked on a preview host, then deployed in one step with redirects in place.
04 The results so far
These numbers come from Google Search Console, Google’s own record of how often a site appears in search and how often people click. The old site’s figures are from before the rebuild; the new site’s are from the first weeks after launch.
| Google Search Console, before and after launch | Old site | New site |
|---|---|---|
| Times the site appeared in Google results, per day | about 50 | about 576 |
| Clicks from Google, per day | 9.1 | 14.0 |
| Pages that appeared in Google | 14 | 339 |
| Different searches the site appeared for | 85 | 1,000+ |
Per-day figures average January 11 to July 12, 2026 (old site) and August 15 to October 4, 2026 (new site). Page and search counts compare four-week windows: June 14 to July 12 and September 6 to October 4. Source: Google Search Console for cardimaging.com.
The site now appears in Google about eleven times as often as it did, for more than ten times as many different searches, and clicks are up about 54 percent. Clicks have grown more slowly than impressions for a simple reason: many of the new pages are still on Google’s second page, where few people click. They are climbing. The average position improved from 13.7 to 11.4 over the most recent four weeks, and as pages reach the first page, clicks follow. Searches for the company’s name still bring most of the clicks today, and that share is expected to shift as product and guide pages rise.
05 What this means for specialty and B2B sellers
Many businesses with real expertise run on a handful of pages because their customers have always called. Meanwhile, the buyers they want are searching for specific products, part numbers, and answers. A catalog that answers those questions, with tools that guide a buyer to the right product, puts that expertise where the buyers are looking.
A catalog does not have to start with a checkout. Card Imaging’s site captures quotes, routes custom orders, and hands product purchases to a channel they already use, and it is built so a cart can be added when the business is ready. If you sell technical or custom products, see how I approach B2B catalogs and product configurators, or e-commerce website design for stores that take orders online.
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