We recently took on a new PPC client that had the following issues:
- A website load time of 9.9 seconds
- A Pagespeed score of D on GTMetrix
- A website that was unuisable for mobile users
- No dedicated landing pages & terrible conversion rates.
Within a day we managed to take their PageSpeed from a D to an A and shave 7 seconds off their load-time.
We started by auditing their page-load waterfall and noticed that they were using HUGE image files, their homepage image was 8Mb! We snipped this down to 90Kb and reduced the resolution, but the website itself was still dreadfully slow and the back-end was a complete mess, they had over 40 WordPress plugins. Rather than mess around and wait for the admin area to finally load we decided it would be quicker to just re-build the whole website.
We started by installing a fresh version of WordPress in a directory and uploading a much less bulky theme.
Next up we installed essential-only plugins:
- Contact Form 7
- Google Tag Manager for WordPress
- Theme Functionality
- CF7 Honeypot
- Yoast
- Smush
- Autoptimize
We then used WordPress’s import Tool and imported all their Pages and Posts, we didn’t import any attachments as the majority of their images were too high resolution to use. We rebuilt their pages to look nice with the new theme and only moved across a few images once compressed. We then setup dedicated landing pages, designed to match users search intent.
Once they were happy with the look of the new and improved site, we hooked it upto Cloudflare and pushed it live.
These were the results on GTMetrix:
- Pagespeed Score went from a D to an A
- Load time went from 9.9s to 2.8s
- Total Page Size went from 10Mb to 784Kb (9.2Mb Saving!)
- Page Requests went from 106 to 34
These results were achieved on a Shared Hosting package, which makes them even more spectacular.
If your website isn’t performing and your conversions aren’t as high as you’d like, please get in touch for a free website audit!
