The REA has the strongest story in UK highways maintenance and a website that undersells it. This is not a rebuild. We fix what gets in the way on the site you already have, and make sure that when someone asks Google, ChatGPT or Gemini who holds the data on UK surface dressing, the answer is the REA.
The project is built around the journey we talked through on the call. Someone is found, then convinced, then shown the evidence, then given something to act on. Most of what follows sits at one of those four stages, and the dashboard in item 09 measures each of them. The rest is the housekeeping that stops any of the stages breaking.
The brief
“The REA is the only organisation in highways that collects data on surface dressing and has done so since 1978. It's the only organisation that can give a true picture of how much preventative maintenance like surface dressing is being carried out in the UK.”
“We need to push on the website that the REA is the go to organisation for expert technical information on bitumen emulsion.”
REA brief, August 2026
That is the proposition, and it is not the first thing the homepage says. A visitor today lands on a carousel that moves faster than it can be read, then a row of three panels covering Resources, Promotion and Events. All accurate, but none of it explains why a highways engineer, a council officer or a journalist should trust the REA above anyone else.
The argument is already on the site, just filed away. Six member companies covering all the major UK producers. An association formed in 1928. Surface dressing data collected since 1978. A 46% fall in surface dressing over eleven years. Reactive pothole repair costing twenty times planned preventative maintenance. Those facts belong at the top of the homepage, in a form that search engines and AI assistants can lift and cite.
Schedule of works
Nine items, across three phases
Items are worked in the order shown, so the message is agreed before anything is built around it. Everything is prepared on a private staging copy of the site and goes live in one release once it has been signed off.
Fix the website
Items 01 to 06Homepage message and hierarchy
Rewrite the top of the homepage around the technical authority proposition, so the first screen states who the REA is, what it uniquely holds, and why that matters in a pothole crisis and a changing climate.
- New headline, opening paragraph and main call to action, drafted for approval
- An evidence strip carrying the 1978 dataset, the six member companies and the 20x preventative maintenance figure
- Existing homepage blocks reordered so Resources, Promotion and Events sit beneath the argument rather than in place of it
Carousel and moving imagery
The homepage carousel advances faster than the slides can be read. We slow it, cut it back, and hand control of it to the visitor.
- Slide interval extended to a readable pace, with pause on hover and on keyboard focus
- Slide count reduced to the strongest messages, with the rest rehomed as static content
- A visible pause control, full keyboard access, and motion switched off automatically for anyone whose device asks for reduced motion
- Other decorative animation across the site reviewed and reduced on the same basis
The surface dressing journey, from search to action
Future-proofing Our Local Roads and Surface Dressing, the Solution to Reducing Potholes are the REA's main public work, and they currently sit behind menu items competing with eleven others. We rebuild them as one route with four stages, so a council officer who has never heard of the REA can get from a question to something they can take into a meeting.
- Found. Entry pages written around the questions people actually type, such as how long surface dressing lasts or what reactive pothole repair costs. This is where the search and AI work in items 07 and 08 lands.
- Convinced. A campaign block on the homepage and one clear entry page that makes the case in a single screen: the dataset going back to 1978, the 46% decline, and reactive repair at twenty times the cost. Navigation tightened so the campaign reads as one destination rather than two competing menu items.
- Evidenced. Direct routes from that page to The Case for Surface Dressing, the pothole prevention presentation and the local authority case studies, so the claim is backed up on the same visit rather than three clicks later.
- Acted on. One obvious next step at the end of the page: download the councillor pack, see the survey data, or contact the REA. Each one tracked as a goal.
Content corrections
Fix the copy errors flagged in the brief, and anything of the same kind we find working through the site.
- Remove the truncated sentence shown in your screenshot, which implies the REA has employees
- Repair the incomplete sentence on the About page beginning “Data collected by the Road Emulsion Association (REA) on this…”
- Proofread every page for cut off text, broken links and out of date references, and correct them
Brand consistency pass
Audit every page against the REA brand guide and bring the strays back into line.
- Colours and typefaces checked page by page against REA Green, REA Grey, Light Grey and Light Green, and Poppins Bold and Poppins Light
- One set of styles applied site wide, so pages added in future inherit the right look automatically
- A short written record of what was out of line and what it was changed to
Usability, mobile and accessibility
The practical pass that makes the site easier to use on the devices your audience actually arrives on.
- Mobile and tablet layout checked across the homepage, campaign pages, technical datasheets and contact
- Text contrast, link visibility, heading order and image alt text corrected where they fall short of WCAG 2.2 AA
- Oversized images compressed, and page loading speed measured before and after
Be the source that gets found and quoted
Items 07 and 08Google Search Console
Set up properly, cleaned up, and then read for you, so you know which questions people are already asking Google that bring them to the REA, and which ones you are nearly winning.
- Search Console property verified for the full domain, with the sitemap submitted and indexing confirmed
- Coverage, mobile usability and Core Web Vitals errors identified and fixed
- Search Console linked to Google Analytics so search data and site behaviour sit in one place
- A shortlist of the queries where the REA already ranks on page two, with the specific page change needed to move each one up
AI search optimisation
A growing share of research now starts in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews. These systems answer by quoting sources they can read and trust. The REA holds the only UK surface dressing dataset and should be the source they quote, but only if the site is written and marked up in a way they can parse.
- Baseline test. We ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews around fifteen real questions, such as who collects data on surface dressing in the UK, or whether preventative road maintenance is cheaper than filling potholes, and record in writing whether the REA is named. We repeat the identical test at handover so you can see the difference.
- Structured data. Schema markup added across the site identifying the REA as an organisation, its publications as documents and its survey as a dataset, which are the labels these systems rely on.
- Citable content. Key statistics rewritten into short, standalone, attributable passages with clear figures, dates and sources, which is the form AI systems lift and credit. Existing meaning is preserved and nothing is invented.
- Crawler access. A recommendation, for your decision, on which AI crawlers to allow, plus an llms.txt file pointing them to the REA's authoritative pages.
- Consistent identity. Name, description and contact details aligned across the site and the main industry directories, so the systems resolve REA and Road Emulsion Association to one organisation rather than several.
See whether it is working
Item 09A simple dashboard at data.rea.org.uk
Google Analytics is built for specialists and is unusable as a board paper. We build a separate page in REA branding, on its own subdomain, that shows five numbers and nothing else. The numbers that tell you whether the strategy is working, each with a plain English line explaining what it means.
- Google Analytics 4 configured correctly, with campaign material downloads tracked as goals
- One page in REA green, grey and Poppins, readable on a phone in a meeting
- Five headline figures, each with this month against last month, and a sentence of interpretation
- Published at data.rea.org.uk behind a password, with no Google login required
- Hosted and maintained by us free for the first twelve months
The dashboard
What item 09 actually shows
This is the whole dashboard, not a section of it. Figures are examples, to show the format.
How people arrived
Most read pages
Example figures. The live version pulls from Google Analytics and Search Console.
Boundaries
What this does not include
Anything here can be quoted separately.
- A new website design or full rebuild
- Moving to a different platform or host
- New photography, video or illustration
- Paid advertising of any kind
- Ongoing monthly SEO or social media
- A members' area, login or database work
- New pages beyond those named in items 01 to 09
- Dashboard hosting beyond the first twelve months
Timeline
Four weeks from go ahead
Audit and baseline
Brand audit page by page. Search Console and Analytics set up. The fifteen question AI baseline test run and recorded. Homepage copy drafted for approval.
Build
Items 01 to 06 implemented on a private staging copy, so nothing changes in public until you have seen it.
Search, AI and dashboard
Structured data, citable content and crawler access applied. The dashboard built and connected at data.rea.org.uk.
Review and launch
One round of revisions, then a single release to the live site. AI test repeated and the before and after handed over.
Investment
£300 payable, for the whole project
Invoiced on completion, payable within 14 days.
Accepting this proposal
Reply to confirm items 01 to 09 and the £300 balance, and we will book a start date. If you want anything added, removed or recosted first, say so and a revised version follows the same day.
Homepage and campaign copy will come to Natalie and Kevin Maw for approval before anything goes live.
Nectar, part of Life Growth Digital
stephen@nectar.org.uk Proposal NEC-REA-01 · Issued 26 August 2026 · Valid to 26 September 2026