Expat Financial Solutions

A financial planning site for Expat Financial Solutions, serving Americans abroad facing cross-border tax and currency complexity. Rebuilt on WordPress with Divi to modernize a dated site, optimized for performance without sacrificing the editing workflow a non-technical team relies on.

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Expat Financial Solutions homepage hero with navigation links for Services, Why Us, Investment Philosophy and a Schedule a Call button, headline "Financial Planning & Wealth Management for Americans Abroad" over a photo of a laptop on a sunlit office desk, plus a gold call-to-action button
Client

Expat Financial Solutions

Status

Live

Introduction

A financial planning and investment advisory site for Expat Financial Solutions, a firm helping Americans living abroad navigate the tax, currency, and cross-border headaches that come with holding money in more than one country. The business was stuck on a badly dated WordPress build and needed a modern, clearly structured site — without leaving the CMS their non-technical team already knew, and without inheriting the sluggishness that page-builder stacks usually bring. Built jointly with my design partner Laurel, who owned the visual build, while I handled performance, backend customization, and image delivery.

Expat Financial Solutions Schedule a Call page with logo and navigation for Services, Why Us and Investment Philosophy above a large heading, followed by a dark navy section titled "What to expect from your call" listing checkmarked discussion points

The Challenge

The firm was stuck on a badly dated WordPress build and needed a modern, clearly structured presentation of services and investment philosophy without leaving the CMS their non-technical team already knew, and without inheriting the sluggishness page-builder stacks usually bring.

The Outcome

Replaced the dated website with a redesigned production site, built with design partner Laurel.

Tech Stack

Frontend

  • Divi
  • CSS

Language

  • PHP
  • JavaScript

Backend

  • WordPress
  • Cloudinary
  • Cloudflare

Tooling

  • Google Tag Manager
  • WordPress as the CMS, kept deliberately in place so the EFS team could continue editing content themselves without retraining on a new system
  • Divi page-builder theme — Laurel, my design partner, owned the templates, layouts, and the site's overall visual system
  • PHP backend customization against WordPress to support the site structure and service taxonomy beyond what the theme provides out of the box
  • Cloudinary for image transformation and delivery, moving that work off the origin server for an audience scattered across time zones and continents
  • Cloudflare sits in front of the site for CDN and DNS/TLS, with Google Tag Manager handling analytics tagging
  • Content is organised around a small, clear set of service routes — financial planning, investment management, investment philosophy, and a scheduling path — rather than a sprawling page tree
Expat Financial Solutions services page with a blue-tinted hero photo of a hand signing documents titled "Financial Planning for Expats", top navigation of Services, Why Us, Investment Philosophy and a Schedule a Call button, above the heading "Planning For The Future When Living Abroad"

Key Implementation Details

Performance work on a page-builder stack

  • Divi ships a lot of CSS and JavaScript by default; the optimization work focused on cutting asset bloat and controlling that builder overhead
  • Everything was done non-destructively — Laurel's layouts and the client's editing workflow had to survive intact, so nothing was solved by ripping out the builder
  • The goal was a full visual overhaul that didn't carry forward the previous site's sluggishness or pick up the usual page-builder performance tax

Backend customization in PHP

  • Custom PHP against WordPress to support the site structure and service taxonomy the theme couldn't express on its own
  • Keeps the service pages organised and extensible while leaving the editing experience familiar to a non-technical team

Offloaded image delivery via Cloudinary

  • Image transformation and delivery moved to Cloudinary rather than being handled by the origin server
  • Directly targets the audience problem: EFS clients are Americans spread across continents, so serving imagery from an edge-optimized service matters more here than it would for a single-market site

Shared patterns across a multi-site estate

  • EFS is one of five properties I maintain for the Online Taxman group, alongside Online Taxman, Global Expat Advisors, and Entity Inc
  • Performance and delivery patterns proven on one site get carried across the others, so maintenance compounds instead of repeating

A clear split of responsibilities

  • Laurel owned design and theme build; I owned performance, backend, and delivery infrastructure
  • That separation meant the visual redesign and the technical cleanup could proceed in parallel without either one compromising the other

What I Contributed

  • Performance optimization on a Divi-based stack, reducing asset bloat and controlling page-builder overhead non-destructively so layouts and editing workflow stayed intact
  • PHP backend customization against WordPress to support site structure and service taxonomy beyond what the theme provides
  • Image delivery through Cloudinary, moving transformation and delivery off the origin server for an audience scattered across time zones and continents
  • Ongoing maintenance as one of five properties for the Online Taxman group, sharing patterns across the estate

Outcome

  • Preserved the team’s familiar WordPress/Divi content-editing workflow.

  • Delivered backend customization and Cloudinary image delivery, with ongoing maintenance after launch.

A redesigned production website built with my design partner Laurel, who owned the visual design and Divi layouts. The EFS team retained its familiar WordPress/Divi content-editing workflow, while I delivered backend customization and Cloudinary image delivery. The site remains under ongoing maintenance.