The Challenge
Taking an existing site from zero to hero performance ratings with minimal impact to workflow.
When National School Choice Week (NSCW) approached Crowd Favorite for help, it was to ensure their site would be shored up before an upcoming event. In the prior year, the same event had brought enough traffic to crash the site and cause severe disruptions to the event. In 2020, when the School Choice Week event would need to be 100% virtual, the need to have a performant site was more critical than ever.
Their existing site had grown organically over time and had been in the hands of multiple development teams. As a result, there was a great deal of “technical debt” that had accumulated and we were given the opportunity to audit the site and provide recommendations.
The first step was to take a baseline of the current site performance and the results were not pretty. The overall performance score for desktop was far into the red zone with a 17 and mobile performance trailing even further behind. In addition, a security scan failed and there were significant issues with SEO and Accessibility.
The initial focus was on site stability and, over the course of under one week, we had audited the site code and were able to provide NSCW with a detailed report, recommendations, and estimates that fit their immediate needs.
Key Results
A performance rebuild that took the site from the red zone to a stable, fast platform ahead of a fully virtual national event.
17% Baseline Performance
The overall performance score for desktop was far into the red zone with a 17 and mobile performance trailing even further behind.
71% Week 2 Improvement
By the end of Week 2 we saw a huge improvement, however, this was not nearly good enough and we still had a few items to work through.
91% End Results
After final optimized performance issues, testing the new server and a 48-hour code and content freeze, we took the site live and the results were astounding.
The Solution
By the end of Week 1, we were able to review our recommendations with NSCW and prioritize the objectives for optimization. In order to be effective we started from the ground up by setting up a clean code repository and cloning the site to a fresh test environment. Once we did so, we immediately realized that the current hosting was insufficient to meet the needs of the site. After discussing a change in hosting with NSCW and getting them on the path to secure hosting they could control, we dove into reducing the severely bloated code and assets on the site.
Cutting the Code and Asset Weight
We started with the basics by refactoring the theme code to resolve errors and removing / replacing plugins. We identified functionality not used on all pages and optimized the site to load assets on demand for specific pages where a particular functionality exists. We also split javascript and css scripts into critical code that should be loaded first and deferred the non-critical code to the end of the execution and removed duplicative analytics tracking code that was interfering with page load times.
We switched from regular images formats (jpg/png) to webp format to reduce page size and lazy loaded images and videos that were not visible on the first screen on load time. We reduced the number of font icons loaded and swapped the icons to the ones most used. We have implemented page cache along with in-memory cache to decrease data access latency, increase throughput, and ease the load off relational or NoSQL database and application.
With these changes, the move to a new server and enabling a CDN, by the end of Week 2 there was a huge improvement in performance. However, this was not nearly good enough and we still had a few items to work through.
CSS Speed Daemon
In Week 3 of our optimization project, we were excited to have NSCW be the first client to benefit from a new tool developed by Crowd Favorite for this purpose – CSS Speed Daemon. This tool was not yet released for public use but it was a perfect fit for the site needs. Speed Daemon parses the CSS styles that are required on each page so that each page loads only the code that’s needed to render in the browser and ignores all surplus styles for that particular page.
The Results
By Week 4 when we were finished optimizing the performance issues and had tested the new server, it was time to merge in recent code and content changes. This was done during a 48 hour code and content freeze and then we took the new site live. The end results were astounding …
Based on the excellent results and rapport we built with NSCW over the short course of the project, we extended our relationship with a support retainer and our dedicated DSS team has taken the reins to continue with feature enhancements and accessibility improvements for the site.
Looking for a Similar Solution?
If you’re facing challenges with an underperforming platform, tight deadlines, or the need for a robust digital experience to support critical events, Crowd Favorite is ready to help.
