How we boosted eCommerce Sales of a website by increasing website speed by 625%

 About the Client:
• Largest independent tire and wheel company in the Houston area
• Distribute & supply alloy factory wheels for every wheel & tire manufacturer
• Dedicated a 50,000 sq ft warehouse to the reconditioning of original factory rim
• Will also recycle unusable scrap rims and used tires
   The Challenge:
• Customers left RTWWheels.com in search of competitor sites
• Slow loading web pages caused a significant drop in online revenue
• Three dozen java scripts were not properly optimized or coded, preventing pages from loading quickly if at all
   The Solution:
• Several scripts were updated to ensure pages loaded correctly
• The team was able to find, fix, and re-test pages for launch
• Three dozen installed java scripts were rewritten and retested for speed optimization
• Previously installed plugins were severely outdated and later updated for speed
   The Result:
• All pages now load quickly without delay
• Pages load at a much quicker rate
• All java scripts loaded in triple the time they used to
• Plugins are now kept up to date to reduce lag time

For professional help to speed up your website, contact us today or call us at 1-800-379-2829

Screenshot of GTMetrix Report Before Optimizationgtmetrix-before

Screenshot of GTMetrix Report After Speed Optimizationgtmetrix-rtwwheels-after

FREE Speed Analysis Of Your Website

Introduction
RTW Factory Wheels, the largest independent wheel and tire repair and recycling company in the state of Texas, aspired to have a fast, error-free, and reliable web site that customers can browse and order from.

Founded in 1989 in Houston, Texas, RTW Wheels began as a small company offering wheel repair services and nationwide tire and wheel sales direct to consumers. Within just a few years, management at RTW Wheels decided to build a new state-of-the-art facility based off yearly growth to better cater to their customers. This would also allow for easier handling of their supply and distribution of alloy factory wheels and tires from all brands for any vehicle.

On February 15th 2007, RTW Wheels launched their online store allowing end-users to order OEM wheels, order tires, and request wheel repair. Within a few years management decided to add several resource articles regarding OEM wheels including selecting the proper size, requesting repair, or requesting trade-in value.

The articles and added content were such a success that management then decided to add several more features dedicated to provide more adequate assistance for web visitors.

The Challenge
With management adding several new features to the back end of RTWWheels.com to better provide useful information, the front-end (what the user interacts with) suffered greatly in terms of performance.

Some of the issues included:

• JavaScript: There were more than 35 blocking java scripts on the page which were preventing the page from loading fast.
• Plugins: There were some plugins that were causing major delays in page load time.
• Page size: Several pages caused an issue with loading time. This includes lack of HTTP compression, combinable CSS images, and missing cache information.
• Images optimization: Several images posted on the website were severely oversized or were repeatedly requested by the browser slowing the process.
• Broken links: Upon scanning the RTWWheels.com website, six unique elements were found to be reporting 404 errors which means the linking URL did not exist.
• Caching issues: Caching (data stored for quicker retrieval of future requests) on RTWWheels.com was not properly setup and implemented.
• CDN issues: A CDN (Content Delivery Network) uses multiple servers in many geographic locations to improve deliveries of static and streaming content. This too was not properly setup and implemented.
• Minify JavaScript and CSS: Various scripts were not minified (process of removing all unnecessary characters from source code without changing functionality). Web pages take much longer to load when characters that are not needed are called by the browser.
Unfortunately, RTWWheels.com did not have a specialist on staff to complete the necessary website changes to quicken the speed and functionalities of web pages.

With limited or no resources and a website that no longer functioned in such a way to benefit customers around the country, RTWWheels.com turned to the internet to find a reputable internet company who specializes in web speed optimization and a proven track record for fixing and optimizing website speed.

FREE Speed Analysis Of Your Website

Our Solution
During RTW Wheels’ search, upper management located via an online search an internet marketing company in the Chicago suburbs, eBizUniverse. Management carefully read the reviews posted on Yelp!, Yahoo!, and Angie’s List by customers to confirm the services offered is what they needed.

An initial phone call to the staff at eBizUniverse yielded very promising ideas that could turn around the virtual world of RTW Wheels.

Staff at eBizUniverse scheduled a follow up call later that week to talk in depth about the changes needed, time frame sought, and cost which was all agreed upon by both companies. It was agreed eBizUniverse would concentrate on 1) fixing plugins, 2) reducing the larger pages sizes, 3) optimize images, 4) and fix the broken links before moving on to other issues. These changes would make an immediate impact on RTWWheels.com web speed in terms of allowing visitors to perform basic tasks such as wheel research, view resource documents, and browse dozens of images without the web server freezing. Secondary tasks included minifying JavaScript and CSS, fix three dozen Java scripts, fix cache issues, and fix the CDN issues.

The Results
eBizUniverse was proud to report all of the issues were fixed within RTWWheels’ timeframe and within their budget. All 35 JavaScripts were optimized. All plugins were updated and tested to ensure reliability. Page sizes were reduced by 15% allowing content to load much faster. All images on the website were optimized with no loss in quality. All six 404 link errors were corrected and tested. Cache plugin issues were corrected and tested. JavaScript and CSS scripts were minified to eliminate browsers from loading unnecessary code.
Today, more than 80% of RTWWheels.com content pages now test at a loading rate of 1.45 seconds or less which is outstanding. Average page sizes are now 1.1MB; before the fixes average page sizes were 1.5MB cutting down on browser requests.

RTWWheels.com continues to thrive in the Houston, Texas market and beyond.

Pingdom Speed Test Before Speed Optimization Work
RTW Wheels Pingdom Before

Pingdom Speed Test After Speed Optimization Work

RTW Wheels Pingdom After
 

FREE Speed Analysis Of Your Website

For professional help to speed up your website, contact us today or call us at 1-800-379-2829

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