La Botte d'Oro

Project overview

Authentic Italian restaurant in Leichhardt, Sydney's Little Italy. Full migration from WordPress to Next.js + Vercel — mobile Performance jumped from 69 to 99, with perfect 100/100 SEO, Accessibility and Best Practices scores on both desktop and mobile.

The challenge

La Botte d'Oro is an authentic Italian restaurant founded by chef-patron Gabriele Franco in Leichhardt — Sydney's 'Little Italy'. Despite a loyal customer base and a reputation built over years of consistent quality, the existing WordPress site was holding the business back: mobile Performance score of 69/100, Best Practices at 58/100 on mobile and 54/100 on desktop, an outdated design that failed to convey the restaurant's premium identity, and no integrated booking system. With local searches like 'italian restaurant Leichhardt' and 'fine dining Sydney' increasingly determining who books and who walks past, the technical and brand gap was actively costing the restaurant customers.

What we did

• 1Full rebuild on a modern stack — abandoning WordPress in favour of Next.js (React) with server-side rendering and static generation, deployed on Vercel for global CDN distribution and near-zero cold starts
• 2Brand-first design system conveying the authenticity and warmth of Gabriele Franco's Italian cooking — elegant typography, hero restaurant imagery, and a consistent colour palette that tells the restaurant's story before the visitor reads a single word
• 3Conversion-focused UX — every page element designed to guide users toward a clear action: booking a table, viewing the menu, or contacting the restaurant. Clear CTAs, integrated booking system, and simplified navigation throughout
• 4Solid SEO foundations from the start — semantic HTML, optimised metadata, restaurant schema markup (LocalBusiness, Restaurant), automatic sitemap, and Open Graph tags. Every technical signal Google rewards, built in from day one
• 5Accessibility maxed out to 100/100 — correct contrast ratios, alt text on every image, keyboard navigation, and proper ARIA structure. A site that works for every visitor, on every device
• 6Best Practices at 100/100 — HTTPS throughout, no deprecated resources, correct security policies, modern image formats. A site engineered to last, not just to launch

The results

Services delivered

Interested in similar services? View all services →

Summary

La Botte d'Oro is a textbook case for why platform choice matters. Patching a struggling WordPress site would have delivered marginal gains; rebuilding on Next.js + Vercel transformed every Lighthouse metric simultaneously — Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO all moved from amber to perfect green on both mobile and desktop. But the perfect scores aren't the goal; they're the foundation. With the technical groundwork in place, La Botte d'Oro is now positioned for the next phase: local SEO, email marketing, and paid campaigns that turn organic visibility into actual bookings. View the live site at labottedoro.com.au.