Case Study
Accelerating Aston Darby’s UX by improving site speed
The world moves quickly and failure to keep up could mean a failure to convert. To help Aston Darby create a fast and efficient user experience, we wanted to cut the load speed of their site…in half.
57% decrease in site load time
53% of people leave a mobile page if it takes longer than three seconds to load
46% of people say waiting for pages to load is what they dislike most about mobile web browsing
A heavy load
Aston Darby is a car park investment firm based in the UK. Their market is not only high risk…but also pretty expensive to get involved with. These factors make it difficult for the business to get leads, so we were tasked with finding a solution that would keep them flowing in at a healthy speed.
A comprehensive solution
To help prospects make the decision to invest, it’s important that they’re given information quickly and easily and that they feel secure with the business. With so much money on the line, it’s unlikely leads will convert if those things are missing.
We analysed Aston Darby’s digital channels and decided that the website was the most significant issue. This is the company’s central hub of information; the place where those interested in investing would be most likely to visit, and where their first, and most important, impressions would be formed.
By accelerating the site’s speed, we could provide users with the information they need, build trust with them and ultimately make them feel more comfortable with investing.
Reducing the HTML
We quickly identified that the site’s biggest problem was the size of its HTML. The site originally clocked in at 138.88kb; far greater than the average of 33kb. With so much HTML to load, it was little wonder things were running so slowly.
We got the size down to a much more manageable 17.69kb, and to do this we followed a careful process.
Updating the core
First, we updated the WordPress core to ensure we were working with up-to-date code. We then removed any unnecessary plugins to reduce clutter and installed the W3 Total Cache Plugin to serve a compressed version of the site to users.
Combining JavaScript
We also combined multiple JS files into larger compressed files. This meant we were in a position to reduce the number of requests made to the server and save the time it takes to do that.
Optimising imagery
There were additional savings to be made through the optimisation of images. We set up a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to serve all of the site’s images and ran them through compression tools beforehand, reducing the overall image size by 40%.
Reducing clutter
On top of these savings, we made a handful of other tweaks aimed at clearing out unused settings and data, and limiting the number of post revisions that the system saves.
We’ve been delighted by Neon’s work. They’ve helped us identify issues we didn’t even know we had and got the website working at a speed we previously hadn’t thought possible. Best of all, their work was completed quickly and to a very high standard. We couldn’t be happier with them.
A fast result
Before our optimisation, the site loaded in seven seconds. By the time we’d finished, that figure dropped to just three seconds, (57% faster) The increased performance led to impressive site statistics.
Five months after our improvement work, the site’s bounce rate was at 53.04%, the number of pages users were visiting per session stood at 2.86 and the average session duration was 2 minutes and 42 seconds.
We are here to help
Want to be at the top of the search ranks? How about a website that’ll give your audience a great experience? Or maybe you’re looking for a campaign that’ll drive more leads? Get in touch to find out how we can help.