MRO website redesign
Reorganise complex aircraft, service and approval information into a structure customers understand quickly, then build it as a fast, mobile-first site.
Best when the capability is right and the website is the bottleneck.
Aircraft MRO · Avionics · Aviation services
Websites for aircraft MRO and aviation service companies
Your engineering wins the work. Your website makes buyers dig for it: which aircraft you take, what you are approved for, who answers when they are AOG. Buyers who cannot find those quickly ring the next shop, and you never hear about it.
Built for MRO, avionics, aircraft management, charter, FBO and specialist aviation businesses.
Note We are digital specialists, not engineers. You approve every regulatory, certification and capability claim before it goes on the page.
Sample · What we found
Nine UK aircraft maintenance and avionics websites, reviewed the same way
Nine UK aircraft maintenance and avionics websites, reviewed against the same checks, on a phone and on a desktop. These are counts from that sample rather than an industry study, and each one has a written report behind it.
- 7 of 9Sites Had no tap-to-call link. The number is on the page, but tapping it on a phone does nothing.
- 5 of 7Measurable Of the sites we could measure took four seconds or more to show their main content on a mid-range phone.
- 3 of 9Sites Had no enquiry or quote form anywhere, including on the page called “contact”.
- 3 of 9Sites Still hand phones a desktop-width layout, so the whole page is shrunk to fit.
None of it reflects on the engineering. It is what happens when a website is set up once, by whoever was available, and then left to get on with it while the business grows.
Sheet 02 · The four questions
Four questions every enquiry starts with
Most aviation websites answer all four, eventually. The redesign answers them on the first screen.
| Item | What an operator is trying to find out | Leads to | Where it usually sits |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Can you work on my aircraft type? | In a paragraph, three pages in | |
| 02 | What are you approved for? | A PDF, or below the fold | |
| 03 | Who do I call when I am AOG? | The same office number as everything else | |
| 04 | Can I get a quote without phoning? | No form on the contact page |
Sheet 03 · Who this is for
Who this is for
Aviation businesses whose customers are technical, cautious and expensive to lose. The commercial problem is rarely the work. It is the website making a buyer do too much of it.
| Item | Buyer | What the site has to say first |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Aircraft MRO | Scheduled maintenance, repairs and overhauls. The site has to say which aircraft you take and what you are approved to do, before anyone will ring. |
| 02 | Avionics | Upgrades, installs and workshop overhaul. Buyers arrive with a make and model in mind and leave if they cannot see it named. |
| 03 | Repair stations | Part 145 and equivalent. Your approval is the reason you win work, so it should not be a PDF a visitor has to go looking for. |
| 04 | Aircraft management | Owners compare managers side by side. Scope, reporting and costs need to be clear on the page before anyone asks for a meeting. |
| 05 | Charter | Enquiries often come from a phone, at short notice. A slow page or a form that fails on a phone loses a booking you never hear about. |
| 06 | FBO | Crews decide on services, fees and handling times. Publishing them plainly is worth more than another photograph of the ramp. |
| 07 | Brokerage | Listings are the product. They need to load quickly, read well on a phone and be findable by type and registration. |
| 08 | Aerospace specialists | NDT, component repair, engineering. Highly specific capability, usually described in language only the inside of the company uses. |
Sheet 04 · Findings
Your engineering capability may be excellent. Your website still has to explain it.
Many aviation businesses have serious technical capability and a website that makes customers work too hard to understand it. These are the patterns that come up again and again.
Every one of these is fixable without changing a single thing about how you work.
- 01
Approvals are buried. The reference is on the site, but three scrolls down the homepage or inside a PDF nobody opens on a phone.
- 02
Services are written as an unbroken paragraph instead of a list a buyer can scan in ten seconds.
- 03
Aircraft types are hard to find, so an operator cannot answer the only question that matters to them first.
- 04
The phone number is text, not a link. On a phone, tapping it does nothing.
- 05
There is no route for an urgent or AOG enquiry, so it arrives in the same inbox as everything else.
- 06
Capability lists live in PDFs, which search engines index poorly and phones render badly.
- 07
The airfield is never named in a way anybody searches for, so local and type-specific searches go elsewhere.
- 08
There is no proof on the page. No approvals visible, no years, no facility, nothing a cautious buyer can lean on.
- 09
There is no enquiry or quote journey, so the only way in is a phone call during office hours.
- 10
Dates give the game away. A copyright year or a news item from four years ago suggests nobody is home.
Sheet 05 · The cost of leaving it
The bill never arrives. You pay it anyway.
Nobody rings to say they chose another shop because of your website. The work simply goes somewhere else, and nothing in the hangar tells you it happened.
-
AOG work goes to whoever answers
An operator with an aircraft on the ground rings until someone picks up. If your urgent route shares an inbox with sales enquiries and supplier invoices, the job has gone by the time anyone reads it.
-
Old approval wording raises doubts
UK approvals replaced EASA ones for UK organisations on 1 January 2021. While a site still shows wording that stopped applying then, a careful buyer wonders what else on it is out of date.
-
Do the sum with your own numbers
Specialist aviation projects begin in the mid four figures. Put that next to what one lost check, avionics install or AOG job is worth to you. If one job covers it, keeping the old site is the expensive option.
The method
The Aviation Website Trust Framework
No more calls that only ask whether you take a type, and no AOG enquiry waiting behind sales email until Monday. Five pillars: what the audit measures and what the redesign is organised around, so the report and the build speak the same language.
-
01
Trust
Can a cautious buyer satisfy themselves about you without picking up the phone?
-
02
Capability
Can they tell in seconds whether you work on their aircraft and their problem?
-
03
Conversion
When they decide to make contact, how many ways are open, and how fast?
-
04
Discoverability
Are you findable by the words operators actually use: type, service, airfield?
-
05
Technical quality
Does it hold up on a phone, on a poor connection, and for someone using a keyboard?
Free MRO website audit
Not sure what your aviation website is costing you?
We review aviation websites against a practical 10-point framework. You get a written report with what we found, how we measured it and what we would change first. No call required to receive it.
- 01Mobile experience, tested at phone width, not resized on a desktop
- 02Approvals: visible, current, and phrased the way the regulator words them
- 03Capability clarity: scannable, not buried in prose
- 04Aircraft coverage: can an operator find their type?
- 05Avionics and workshop scope
- 06AOG and urgent contact route
- 07Trust signals: proof a buyer can check
- 08Conversion: call, enquiry, quote, and what happens after
- 09Discoverability: airfield, service and type coverage
- 10Technical quality: speed, stability, accessibility, security basics
How we redesign aviation websites
A UK Part 145 maintenance organisation, reorganised
A real audit of a real UK maintenance organisation, and the concept we built from it. The observations below are what we measured on their live site. The changes are design decisions, not results: nothing here was commissioned and no business outcome is claimed.
Concept · uncommissioned · company not named
What we found
- The main phone number appeared as text on 23 pages, with no tap-to-call link on any of them.
- Two different main phone numbers, on different pages of the same site.
- Two department email addresses existed only as images, so they could not be copied, tapped or indexed.
- Approval references were present, but below the fold and set in running prose.
- Aircraft types and capabilities were written as paragraphs rather than lists.
- No route for an urgent or AOG enquiry anywhere on the site.
What the concept changes
- Every phone number becomes a tap-to-call link, and one number is used everywhere.
- Email addresses become real text and real links, indexable and tappable.
- Approval references move into the first screen, next to the aircraft weight limit and ratings.
- Capabilities become a scannable list, with the aircraft types named.
- A separate, obvious route for urgent work, so it does not queue behind sales enquiries.
- Rebuilt to load fast on a phone, with the layout reserving space so nothing jumps while it loads.
We build these as working pages, not slides. If yours is the site being reviewed, you get the same: a written report first, then a live page you can open on your phone and show to someone else.
Sheet 06 · Services and method
Services
Six things, each with a commercial outcome rather than a deliverable. Most engagements start with one and grow.
Avionics website design
Make equipment, approvals and upgrade paths searchable by the names buyers use, including the manufacturers you are authorised for.
Best when enquiries start with a specific box or a specific panel.
Aviation SEO and discoverability
A page for each service, aircraft type and airfield you serve, so the searches that are already happening land on you rather than a directory.
Best when operators search for exactly what you do and find someone else.
Conversion optimisation
Fix the enquiry path: tap-to-call, a quote form that works on a phone, and a separate route for urgent and AOG work.
Best when traffic is fine and the enquiries are not.
Website care and security
Updates, backups, uptime and security checks, plus the small changes that otherwise wait two years.
Best when nobody in the building owns the website.
Aviation digital strategy
Where enquiries come from now, what each is worth, and which two changes would move the number. Written down, with an order.
Best before a rebuild, not after one.
How the work runs
Five steps. You can stop after the first one and keep everything we have written.
- 1
Audit
We review your site as an aircraft owner or operator would, not against a generic web checklist. You get the written report.
- 2
Position
We agree what you want to be known for, which aircraft and services lead, and who the page is written for.
- 3
Structure
Approvals, capabilities, types and contact routes get an information architecture before anybody designs anything.
- 4
Design and build
Built mobile-first and fast, with your regulatory and capability wording signed off by you before it goes live.
- 5
Launch and improve
Launch, watch what enquiries actually do, then improve the pages that carry them. Optional monthly care.
For an aviation business the website is part of the sales process, not a digital brochure. Projects are scoped around business goals, site complexity, content architecture and any integrations. Specialist aviation projects typically begin in the mid four figures and move into five figures for larger engagements. You get a fixed quote before any work starts, you own everything from day one, and there is no lock-in contract. If something we did breaks your site, including an update we applied, putting it right costs you nothing. Full price list.
Aviation website insights
Written out in full, no email gate
Everything we use in the audit is published. If you want to take it and do it yourself, take it and do it yourself.
-
What should an aircraft maintenance website actually contain?
Seven questions every maintenance enquiry starts with, the order to answer them in, and what belongs on the homepage rather than three clicks away.
-
How to present CAA, EASA and FAA approvals on an MRO website
Where the reference goes, how to word it so it matches the regulator, what to do with the certificate PDF, and the post-Brexit wording still live on UK sites today.
-
The aircraft MRO website conversion checklist
Twenty-one checks, in the order they cost you enquiries, with what we found when we ran them across nine UK aircraft maintenance and avionics websites.
Questions
Questions we get asked
Do you understand aviation, or just websites?
Websites. We are digital specialists who work with aviation businesses, not engineers, and we do not give engineering, airworthiness or regulatory advice. What we do understand is how an aircraft owner, operator or flight department researches a maintenance provider online, and what makes them leave a page. Every technical and regulatory statement on your site is yours to approve before it goes live.
What do you need from us to start?
Your website address is enough for the audit. For a project: your approval references as you want them worded, the aircraft types and services you want to lead with, and someone who can sign off technical wording. We do not need engineering documents, aircraft records, maintenance manuals, technical drawings, avionics configuration files or access to any operational system. A website project works from publicly shareable, client-approved information.
Will you write our capability and approval wording?
We will draft it from what you already publish and from a call with your team, in the words your customers use. You check it against your approval schedule and correct anything that is not exactly right before it goes live. Nothing regulatory goes on a page we have not had signed off.
What if something goes wrong after launch?
If something we did breaks your site, or puts a wrong phone number or approval detail live, putting it right costs you nothing. That includes an update we applied.
How long does a redesign take?
A focused MRO site is usually four to eight weeks from brief to launch, and the variable is almost always content sign-off rather than build time. Larger sites with many service, type and location pages take longer. You will have a date before you commit.
Can you work with our existing website rather than replacing it?
Often, yes. If the site is sound underneath and simply out of date, fixing what is there is cheaper and faster than starting again. If it hands phones a desktop-width layout or runs on a builder that cannot be made fast, a rebuild is the honest answer. The audit will say which, with the reasons.
We are outside the UK. Does that matter?
No. We take on aviation work in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Gulf and Western Europe. Calls are scheduled around your working day and projects are quoted in your currency.
Is the audit really free, and what is the catch?
It is free and there is no call required to receive it. The catch, such as it is, is that we only review aviation businesses, and we hope that if the report is useful you will think of us when you decide to act on it. If you take the report and fix it yourself, that is a good outcome too.
Do you use cookies or tracking?
This site sets no cookies and loads no tracking scripts, which is why there is no consent banner. The audit form emails your details to us and stores nothing here.
No obligation · You keep the report either way
Let us see what your website is doing well, and what is costing you enquiries
An aviation-specific review of trust, capability and conversion. Until the site is fixed, every buyer it loses goes quietly to someone else.
Or email enquiries@prettyducklings.com