Case Study

Motorcycle Training Website Design — Taunton School of Motorcycling Case Study

A Somerset riding school teaching since 1996 — rebuilt as thirteen pages on exactly the same thirteen addresses, so not one redirect was needed and nothing they had earned in search was lost.

ClientTaunton School of Motorcycling
SectorMotorcycle Rider Training
Training Since1996
LocationTaunton, Somerset
Taunton School of Motorcycling website designed and built by Mediatopia

Thirty years of teaching people to ride

Taunton School of Motorcycling — T.S.M., as they call themselves throughout their own site — commenced training in 1996. In their words it is “a family run business, with the emphasis on quality riding tuition, more than just training to pass the test.”

They run CBT, A2 and A licence training from Eastleigh Road in Taunton, using Taunton Town Football Club for the off-road elements. The website had to do something a brochure cannot: tell a seventeen-year-old what they are allowed to ride, and tell a returning rider in their forties something completely different, from the same page.

Every address kept, so nothing in search was lost

This is the part that matters most and shows the least.

The rebuild has exactly the same thirteen addresses as the site it replaced — checked slug by slug before the switch, thirteen against thirteen, with no page lost in either direction. Every page that was ranking kept its own URL, and not a single redirect was needed.

Redirects are how most rebuilds lose ground. A page moves, the redirect passes on some of its standing rather than all of it, and a year of ranking quietly drains away. The cheapest way to keep it is not to move the page at all.

The switch itself took the site from the old build to the new one without a moment when the domain pointed at nothing — the new site was given the domain before the old one released it, not after.

Four things built out of their own rules

Their information pages are dense and correct and almost nobody reads them. The same facts were rebuilt as things you use rather than things you scroll past, every one from their own content and no figure invented.

Pick your age — 16, 17–18, 19–23 or 24 and over — and only the licence categories open to you appear, with what each one lets you ride and how it is gained. A power ladder runs alongside it, drawn to their own figures: under 50cc and 28 mph, 125cc and 14.6 bhp, 46.6 bhp, then any power, with the same age choice lighting the rungs you can reach.

A third works out what a course costs — course by days by bike — and writes the choice straight into the booking form. A fourth lays out the CBT day: an 08:00 start and the five DVSA elements, A to E, in order and in their words.

Three of the four are built in CSS rather than JavaScript, so they work before a single script has run — on an old phone, on a bad signal, in a car park outside the school.

Their own footage, without the weight

The page opens on a rider’s-eye clip they shot themselves. The original was 9.9MB, far too much to put behind a headline, so a web version was made from it — 1152×648, 2.0MB — and the still image is a frame out of that same clip, so there is no jump when the film starts.

A phone never downloads it at all. It is attached above 900px only, and never when the visitor has asked for reduced motion or is saving data. The people most likely to be looking this up at a kerbside get the picture and none of the weight.

What we would not put on the page

Their opening hours are, in their own words, “roughly 09–10 and 3–4” — because, as they explain it, “I came to your school, but it was closed! & that’s probably because we were all out on-road training!”

Publishing that as fixed hours would be inventing a precision they have not given, so the site claims no opening hours at all. The same rule caught a figure in their old FAQ that their own price table contradicted: it was left off rather than guessed at, and raised with them instead.

We do not put a number on a website that the client has not stood behind. It is the cheapest way to avoid the phone call that starts “your website says…”.

Live on their own domain

Thirteen pages, every one reachable and returning cleanly on the real domain. Accessibility checked on all thirteen with nothing to fix, and no text anywhere failing contrast. The phone menu is the same one used across every site here — every page in it including Contact, opening and closing with a finger and with a keyboard.

Rebuilt and live on tauntonschoolofmotorcycling.com in September 2026, their mail untouched, their thirteen addresses unchanged, and the school with a login to their own dashboard.

If you train, teach or assess and your website makes people ring up to ask what they are allowed to do, that is exactly the work. The AFB Motorcycles case study and the Longcross Garage case study are comparable projects.

What We Built

Project development work carried out

Thirteen Pages, Same Thirteen Addresses

Rebuilt on every original URL, so no redirects were needed and no ranking was lost in the move.

A Licence Finder And A Power Ladder

Pick your age and only the categories you can hold appear, drawn to their own published limits.

Course Costs, Worked Out

Course by days by bike, showing their own price with the deposit and the balance, and writing the choice into the booking form.

Their Own Film, At A Fifth Of The Weight

9.9MB cut to 2.0MB, with the poster taken from the same clip — and never fetched on a phone at all.

Common Questions

Motorcycle Training Website Design FAQs

It does not have to. The usual cause is pages changing address: even with redirects in place, a moved page rarely carries its full standing across. Taunton’s rebuild kept all thirteen addresses exactly as they were, so there was nothing to redirect and nothing to lose. Where a site genuinely does need restructuring we map every old address to a new one first and redirect all of them.
Yes, and it is usually the most useful part of the site. Taunton’s licence finder and power ladder are built entirely from rules they had already published — the work is turning what a business knows into something a visitor can answer in two taps. Most of ours are built in CSS so they work before any script loads.
Yes. Taunton School of Motorcycling have been training riders since 1996. The same shape suits any business where what the customer is allowed to buy depends on their circumstances — age, licence, experience — and the website has to sort that out before a phone call.
Only the ones you have given us and stand behind. Taunton’s published course prices are on the page and worked out for the visitor; a figure in their old FAQ that their own price table contradicted was left off and raised with them instead. We never invent a price, a turnaround time or an opening hour.

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