Jeremy asked me to go through the site the way a skeptical $100K-a-year show parent would, then the way a search engine would, then the way a developer would. The site's positioning and copy are strong. The problems are mostly plumbing, proof, and visibility. Everything below was checked against the live site on July 25, 2026.
The form is declared as <form class="contact-form" onsubmit="return false;"> and no script anywhere on the page handles it. Clicking "Send Message" does nothing: no request, no error, no acknowledgment. Every inquiry typed into it since launch has been silently discarded. The two free-resource email forms are fine; they post to a live Netlify function. Only the contact form is dead.
Fix: the site is already on Netlify, so Netlify Forms is a five-line change, with email notifications to [email protected]. Then send a test message and confirm it arrives.
The page has no meta description, no Open Graph or Twitter tags, no sitemap.xml, no robots.txt, no structured data, and the title is just "High Altitude Equine". Two consequences: Google has almost nothing to rank the site with for searches like "CHJA consultant" or "NCEA equestrian recruiting help", and when the link is shared in iMessage, Instagram DMs, or Facebook groups, it unfurls with no image and no description. For a business that will spread parent-to-parent by shared link, that preview card is the first impression, and right now it's blank.
Fix: one block of head tags, a 1200×630 branded preview image, sitemap, robots, and a JSON-LD ProfessionalService block with the six services and prices.
The page contains no <img> tags at all. This is a visual sport being sold with typography alone. A parent deciding whether to trust a stranger with their show season wants to see the ring, the venue, and above all the person they'd be talking to. Related: the name "Marti" appears nowhere in the page copy. It appears only in the email address and the Calendly URL. Visitors are asked to book a call with someone who is never introduced.
Fix: a hero photo, a headshot next to "Hi, I'm Marti", and one candid per section. Four photos would transform the site.
No testimonials, no client quotes, no "families I've worked with", no Instagram link. The strongest evidence on the page (Maclay Region 6 Championship, three national finals qualified in one season) is real and impressive, but it's presented as anonymous stat blocks, so a first-time reader can't tell whose results they are or what they prove about the consulting.
Fix: collect three short client quotes (even beta clients or CHJA friends), attribute the family results clearly, and link the Instagram if one exists.
The email-capture modal opens on arrival, before a visitor has read a single line. On mobile that's the whole screen. Google also penalizes intrusive interstitials on mobile. The guide is a good lead magnet; the timing turns it into a door slammed in the visitor's face.
Fix: trigger on exit-intent or 50% scroll, never in the first ten seconds, once per visitor per month.
The lowest-friction step for a cold visitor — a free 20-minute call — lives in one paragraph near the bottom. The hero instead asks for "Book a Consultation", which for a stranger means committing to a paid session. Lead with the free call; let the paid sessions be the follow-through.
Fix: hero CTA becomes the free discovery call; secondary button goes to services and pricing.
"4+ Years A-Circuit Experience" is the first stat a visitor sees, and next to trainers who advertise decades, it reads junior. But experience-in-years is the wrong axis entirely. Marti's edge is that she's living the exact process her clients are entering, right now, with current rules and current costs. The stats should say outcomes: a Maclay Regional Championship season, three national finals in one year, camps at Auburn, SMU, and Texas A&M, a four-finals campaign in progress.
Fix: replace the "4+ years" block with outcome-first framing and name whose results are whose.
There is no measurement on the site at all: no way to know how many visitors arrive, which services they read, or where they leave. Every improvement after this one is a guess without it.
Fix: Plausible (one script tag, no cookie banner needed) with events on Calendly clicks and form submissions.
/favicon.ico returns 404 (the PNG icons exist; some clients still request the .ico)No FAQ — and this business has one giant unasked question sitting on every visitor's mind: "why wouldn't I just ask my trainer?" The conflict-of-interest answer is the whole pitch and it's currently one sentence. Also missing: a privacy policy (the site collects emails), and any consent note under the email forms.
It's a useful free tool, likely the most linkable thing on the site and the kind of thing that gets passed around a barn group chat. Right now it's a plain nav link. It should be a featured card in Free Resources and a reason people share the site.
Three directions, all with the fixes above baked in. Photo slots are labeled placeholders; real photos are the one thing only you can supply. Click any preview to open the full page.
Keeps the green/gold identity exactly. Adds the introduction ("Hi, I'm Marti"), photo slots, outcome-first proof band, free-call-first hero, testimonials, and an FAQ. The safest option: it reads as "the site grew up," not "the site changed."
Cream and ink with gold accents, big serif headlines, story-forward. Feels like a feature in a horse publication rather than a sales page. Best if the goal is to look established and editorial; photos matter most in this one.
Organized around one question: "where is your rider right now?" Three paths (local, going national, college-bound), each leading to the right service, then straight to the free call. A working FAQ accordion and a sticky call bar. The most opinionated, and probably the highest-converting.
Copy this whole block and paste it into a Cowork session that has access to the site's files. It works through the fixes in priority order and stops for your approval after each one. It changes nothing about the brand.
I need you to fix a prioritized list of issues on highaltitudeequine.com, my equestrian consulting site. It is a static single-page site (index.html plus a /schedule-builder page) hosted on Netlify. There is a working Netlify Function at /.netlify/functions/subscribe used by the free-resource email forms. Brand: near-black #0C0C0A background, deep greens #152E22 / #1E4030, gold #C5993A, cream #F5F0E6, Cormorant Garamond headlines, Raleway body. Ground rules: - Keep the brand colors, fonts, section order, and all Calendly URLs exactly as they are. - Work through the numbered items IN ORDER. After each one, show me the diff or the relevant code and wait for my approval before continuing. - Never invent testimonials, results, or quotes. Where real content is needed from me, build the structure and leave a clearly marked placeholder. - After deploying, verify against the LIVE site by fetching it, not by assuming. 1. FIX THE DEAD CONTACT FORM. The contact form currently has onsubmit="return false;" and no JavaScript handler, so submissions go nowhere. Convert it to Netlify Forms: add name="contact" and data-netlify="true", add a hidden honeypot field, remove the dead onsubmit, and add success/error states in the same style as the working resource forms. Afterward, remind me to enable email notifications to [email protected] under Netlify → Forms, and have me send a test submission and confirm it arrives before we move on. 2. ADD THE MISSING HEAD TAGS. The page has no meta description, no Open Graph or Twitter tags, and no canonical URL. Add: - title: High Altitude Equine | A-Circuit & NCEA Recruiting Consulting for Show Families - meta description (~150 chars) mentioning show strategy, CHJA, A-circuit, and NCEA D1 recruiting consulting - canonical https://highaltitudeequine.com/ - og:title, og:description, og:type, og:url, og:image plus twitter:card summary_large_image - Create the og image: 1200×630, brand colors, site name and one-line tagline, saved as /og.png - JSON-LD ProfessionalService: name, url, email, areaServed (Colorado + nationwide via video), founder Person "Marti", and offers for all six services with their prices ($200, $500, $400, $125, $175, $300) Do the same (title/description/OG) for the /schedule-builder page. 3. ADD sitemap.xml (homepage + /schedule-builder), robots.txt allowing everything and pointing at the sitemap, and a real /favicon.ico (currently 404). 4. FIX COPY BUGS: change "a equestrian family" to "an equestrian family"; rewrite the About opener, which is currently a sentence fragment ("As a competing adult amateur, mom of a national-level Big Eq junior, and a family that has lived the full circuit, from regional qualifiers to Maclay Finals. I speak this language fluently.") into grammatical sentences with the same meaning; make the footer copyright year update automatically (it says 2025). 5. INTRODUCE ME BY NAME. My name appears nowhere in the page copy. At the top of the My Story section add a short "Hi, I'm Marti" introduction with an image slot for a headshot (I'll supply the photo; use a styled placeholder with alt text until then). Rework the four stat blocks so it is clear which results are my daughter's (Maclay Region 6 Championship, three national finals, the four-finals campaign) and which are mine (adult amateur competitor, show operations, budget management). Replace the "4+ Years A-Circuit Experience" stat with an outcome-based one; years-of-experience is our weakest framing. 6. MAKE THE FREE DISCOVERY CALL THE PRIMARY CTA. Hero buttons become: primary "Book a free 20-minute discovery call" (linking to the existing Calendly discovery-call URL) and secondary "See services & pricing" (anchor to services). Keep each service card's own booking link. Add one reassurance line under the hero CTA: no commitment, we figure out fit first. 7. TAME THE POPUP. It currently opens immediately on page load. Change it to trigger on exit-intent or at 50% scroll depth, whichever comes first, never within the first 10 seconds, and at most once per visitor per 30 days (store a timestamp in localStorage, not just a boolean). 8. ADD IMAGE SLOTS with descriptive alt text: one hero image, the About headshot, and one photo per major section. Use styled placeholders (brand-colored, labeled) until I supply photos. When I add real photos: compress to WebP under 200KB, lazy-load everything below the fold. 9. ADD A TESTIMONIALS SECTION between Services and Free Resources: layout for three short quotes with name, circuit, and a one-line result. Build it hidden (display:none with a clear HTML comment) until I paste in real quotes. Do not write sample quotes. 10. ADD AN FAQ SECTION (accessible accordion, real button elements) answering at least: "Why wouldn't I just ask my trainer?" (the conflict-of-interest answer is our core pitch, so give it room), "Is this riding instruction?" (no — strategy only), "Do you only work with Colorado families?", "What happens on the discovery call?", and "What's your rescheduling policy?" (I'll give you the actual policy, so ask me). Add FAQPage JSON-LD. 11. ADD A PRIVACY POLICY at /privacy covering the email capture forms, the Netlify function, and the Calendly embed. Link it in the footer. Add a one-line consent note under each email form. Flag anything about my email handling you'd need me to confirm rather than guessing. 12. ADD ANALYTICS. Plausible, one script tag, with custom events for: Calendly link clicks (each service separately), resource form submissions, and contact form submissions. If Plausible needs an account I don't have, pause and tell me the options and prices first. 13. PROMOTE THE SCHEDULE BUILDER. Add it as a third featured card in Free Resources ("Free Tool: Colorado Jumping Tour Schedule Builder") linking to /schedule-builder, instead of being only a nav link. 14. FINAL VERIFICATION. After the last deploy: fetch the live homepage and confirm the meta description and og:image are present in the served HTML; confirm /sitemap.xml, /robots.txt, and /favicon.ico return 200; run a Lighthouse check and report mobile scores for performance, SEO, and accessibility (target 90+); confirm the popup does not appear on first paint; and list every check with its actual result. If anything fails, fix it and re-verify before telling me we're done.
If she'd rather do a full redesign than patch the current page, any of the three mockups above can be the starting point. Tell the session which one and it can rebuild from that layout with the real copy.