Off Wix. Almost twice the people finding them on Google.

Where they were

Nicole and April built Sunhouse the way these businesses get built, one family recommending it to the next, over five years. The demand was never in question. Childcare in this city is busting at the seams.

What had not kept up was everything behind the referral. They liked the look of their site, and it was not a vanity problem. It was an old Wix build sitting on top of third-party licensed booking software that did not behave.

The credit system did not work as set up. Refunds went out to keep families happy when it got things wrong. Hours every week went on auditing it to check it had done what it was told, and usually it had not. Errors kept appearing that were completely outside their control, but every one of them reflected on Sunhouse, in front of a customer, as poor service. They spent a significant part of every week saving face for software they did not own.

What was actually broken

Not the website. The foundation.

This matters because the obvious answers would all have failed. SEO, paid ads, a branding refresh, a new logo, more marketing spend. None of it would have hit, because none of it touches how a family signs up, how they pay, or how a sitter reaches them. Pour traffic onto a broken foundation and you just have more people watching it not work. Finding out which one you have is what the Foundation Audit is for.

What we built

This is the biggest build I have taken on, and it started from their pain points rather than from a design brief. We worked through where the time was going, where the business wanted to grow, and what the technology needed to do to let it. That order, the problem before the build, is how I work on everything. Then we built the system the business runs on.

It is not a website with a booking widget bolted to it. It has let them move into a different business model, and honestly into a different business.

We put in everything they had ever wanted and never been able to have.

• A fast public site they own. Quick to load, and written so Google and the AI assistants can describe the agency accurately.
• A nanny payroll calculator. A family hiring a nanny in BC can see the true cost, hourly pay plus CPP, EI, WorkSafeBC, vacation pay and stat holidays.
• A community hub with 14 neighbourhood guides. Parks, rainy-day spots, libraries and indoor play, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, plus date-night ideas and free outings.
• Blog posts and guides written for parents in this city, useful whether or not they need a sitter today.
• Their real Google reviews, pulled straight from Google onto their own site, so a nervous parent sees what other families said without leaving.
• Memberships families can buy online, through Stripe checkout.
• A referral partner program. Partners apply, get approved, and get their own dashboard to refer families and see what they have earned.
• Sitter applications on their own site. Caregivers now apply to Sunhouse directly, not through the licensed software.
• Their own phone line, connected, so the team has one place to see who they have spoken to.
• A record of every text and email, so the team can always see what was said, and when.

What is coming

The Sunhouse Hub is being built now and is close to launch. It is a genuinely different way to find childcare, narrow on purpose, designed around safety for both sides of the arrangement, families and caregivers alike, and built so the business can actually grow on it.

Tested first, kept only if it works

Some ideas I test before I trust them. For Sunhouse that meant two companion review sites and a free Chrome extension of the neighbourhood guides, to see whether they helped families find Sunhouse.

The extension did less than expected, because links from extension listings do not pass search credit. That is exactly why I test first. Sunhouse only keeps what works.

What happened

One summer. Summer 2026 against summer 2025, the same months a year apart, so the season cannot explain it.

• New customers grew 138%. Nearly two and a half times as many families coming to Sunhouse for the first time.
• Recurring payments went from 20% of everything they took to 71%. Monthly memberships went from rare to the main way families pay, and the number of recurring payments grew about sevenfold.
• Google search clicks nearly doubled, up 94%.
• Google showed Sunhouse for more than twice as many different searches as the summer before, and it ranked first for more than twice as many. Before the rebuild, nobody was watching any of this. The old site had no analytics, and nobody was reading its search data.
• The site is now drawing local and international attention, with confirmed bookings behind it.
• One-time payments fell 24% over the same period, as families moved onto memberships. Worth saying plainly: that shift started in spring 2026, before the new site launched. The online checkout made memberships easy to buy, it did not invent the demand for them.

Sources: Stripe payment and customer records, June to August 2025 against June to August 2026. New customers counted once per email address, first-time only. Google Search Console for clicks, June to October 2025 monthly average against June to August 2026, and for searches shown and first-place rankings, June to August 2025 against June to August 2026. Counted alongside the rebuild, not attributed to it alone.

Why this one stayed with me

Most of what I do makes a business easier to find. This one changed how the business runs.

The difference is ownership. We did not move Sunhouse onto somebody else’s software and call it an upgrade. We built it around how the business actually works, and the two people running it are the ones deciding what gets built next.

In their words

“Changing our site and upgrading our business let sales flow more easily. Not only because people were finding us organically, but because of the confidence it gave us in our own product. The way we were presenting ourselves changed, and we became more confident as founders. We closed more deals. We fine-tuned our boundaries so the two of us were aligned, and after five years of grinding at the kitchen table, our nervous systems finally started to settle.”

Nicole and April, Sunhouse Babysitting