Nordics’ Website Upgrade: Same Look, Smoother Performance, and a 24.4% Boost in Organic Traffic
Sometimes, the most impactful projects emerge from unexpected needs rather than meticulous planning. This was precisely the case with wearenordics.com
Background Information
Nordics has been our longest-standing client. We’ve worked together since their e-shop first launched, but they’ve always focused primarily on their wholesale business. B2C? Not so much. After some friendly persistence on our part, they finally agreed to add an online shop to their website, which previously only served as an information hub for distributors and retailers. Collaborating with a freelance developer, the 3 sides successfully integrated the e-shop, and our Juju team concentrated on creating engaging content and driving traffic to this new digital platform. While the shop’s build wasn’t perfect—pages took up to 11 seconds to load—it was a great start for building awareness, attracting local and international customers, and showcasing their fantastic products.
The Problem
Three years later, Nordics made the decision to switch their website maintenance provider and update their WooCommerce version. Up until this point, the backend had been neglected, no regular updates or plugin optimizations had been carried out, and the website’s performance had begun to lag. In fact, the backend was so slow it required the patience of a monk just to load product pages in the admin panel.
In summary:
- Outdated Backend: The lack of regular updates and systematic backend reviews led to numerous conflicts and inefficiencies within the website’s infrastructure.
- Slow Loading Speeds: Users and administrators alike experienced frustratingly slow loading times, with some product pages taking an eternity to load, especially within the admin panel.
- Functional Disruptions: Implementing new on-site promotions triggered multiple plugin conflicts and cart malfunctions, adversely affecting the final stages of the customer journey.
- Maintenance Gaps: The new maintenance provider’s limited scope and unfamiliarity with the website’s build compounded these issues, leading to periods of shared uncertainty and responsibility.
Things escalated when we added some features for on-site promotions and ran into multiple plugin conflicts and cart issues—right at the final stages of the customer journey. Not exactly ideal, especially during a busy PPC campaign. And when it’s Valentine’s Day and people are rushing off on holiday, the last thing you want is for your e-shop to grind to a halt. It quickly became clear that the client’s maintenance plan didn’t cover this level of debugging, and the new provider was missing key information about the build. What followed was a brief period of “shared irresponsibility,” which we swiftly put an end to.
Emergency Reactions and Problem Eradications
As their marketing agency, we had all the historical context and access to the missing pieces. We took the lead, identified the conflicts, fixed the bugs, and completed final testing all in the same day. But this was our wake-up call. Maintaining the website had always been on the back burner—until now. As the saying goes, “If you don’t take the time to do it right, you’ll need to take the time to do it twice.”
After discussing the issues and potential risks with the client, they agreed to a comprehensive overhaul. We cleared inactive extensions, debugged lingering conflicts, and optimized oversized images (some were over 3MB!). This 16-hour effort not only improved core web vitals but also put an end to the ongoing issues that cropped up every time changes were made in the admin panel.
Chart 1: Organic Search Traffic Jan – Aug 2024 vs Jan – Aug 2023
Chart 2. Overall page performance grade in Sep 2023 according to GTmetrix
Chart 3. Overall page performance grade in Aug 2024 according to GTmetrix
The result? A faster, more reliable website that saw a 24.4% boost in organic traffic, 29,8% increase in direct traffic. There’s still room for improvement until we sit top of the class with “A” grades, but we’ve outlined the next steps and hope to reach even higher performance benchmarks for Nordics soon.
Stay tuned!