WordPress website 

case study.

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I hope that illustrated just how much can be done with a website upgrade. Of course, if you want a site built from scratch, it can be built and designed from the ground up in any style you like. It's not just the look, feel and functionality of a website that counts, speed and performance matter too. 

Check out the images below where you can see: 

This performance improvement will undoubtedly help with the new site rankings as it indexes over time with the search engines.

Competitor Website Score

Client Website Score (Pre-Rebuild)

Client Website Score (Post-Rebuild)

Whilst the score for the new website is excellent, it isn't perfect and this is important. To make their website more user-friendly with a defined user experience relevant to their business, we added a couple of features to the homepage. 

These were the scrolling testimonial carousel, the map and the translation plug in. Whilst these do add to the UX (user experience), they also slow the website down slightly. As long as all other practices are put in place, this shouldn't be too much of an issue. However, if the website is already slow, having these extras active could slow the site to the point it gets penalised.

This is why it is important to hire someone that understands what need to be done to appease the Google Gods.

My Personal Website Case Study Performance Scores

Check out my new wedding photography website below. Pretty good score right? The "structure" could do with some fine tweaking but the performance, and therefore the speed, gets a perfect 100%. 

What Does It All Mean?

The GT Metrix Grade (performance and Structure) basically show you how well your site performs overall. This is with regards to how well it is built and how fast it loads for visitors.

Largest Contentful Paint

This measures how long it takes for the largest element on your page to load. This could be the headers' "hero" image for example. Anything under 2 seconds is good but for best user experience, look to get under 1.2 seconds. A slow loading site will cause visitors to "bounce" (hit the back key) and go back to search results. Not good.

Total Blocking Time

This measures how much time is blocked by scripts as your page loads. Anything under 150ms will bode well for your site.

Cumulative Layout Shift

This for me is the most annoying part of a site if it isn't built well. You've probably seen it. It is when a web page is loading and the page and its elements shift about and get into place. If this takes a long time, you will score low and be penalised. A score of 0.1 or less is best.

Anyway, this is a brand new site (as at 16.05.22) so the foundations are set. It also ranks very well for all of its interior pages...

All Page Scores in GT Metrix for Nick Stubbs Photography

This is how a well built, well optimised website should be ranking for best results in the long run. Start as you mean to go on.

After just 10 days of the above site being built, it is already showing up in Google search results for certain terms I was aiming for. This is as per Google own Search Console so the site is already on its way to doing well.

This is the GT Metrix score for one my largest competitors...

All Things Photography Website Case Study

This is my 1000+ page digital imaging help website that was built in February 2005. It has good standing with Google and this is (I think) the 8th rendition of this site. I have re-built it every few years to keep up with the times and this is the latest version.

The website has a very busy homepage with a lot of images. Photos added to a website need to be perfect with regards to the rules that Google sets. So, even with a lot of images on the homepage, the score and speed is excellent.

Freefly Multimedia Website Case Study

Finally, this website. Freeflymultimedia.com was built in October 2021 so at the time of writing, very new. I have however, used all of the same techniques, software, hosting and design as all the others and the results speak for themselves.

Summary

All of the above and the results obtained, only account for a fraction of the work needed to get these results. On top of all that, the website has to be built to your specifications, desires and needs whilst retaining that level of performance. 

"Buy cheap, buy twice" is one of my favourite sayings and something I live by. Many people will think "it's just a website, it doesn't matter" but not so. Imagine if you ran a coffee shop in town and the front facia was dirty, run-down and didn't clearly explain what the place was for or what it offered. How many customers would you get? Would the local council promote it?

Spend less building a cheap website now and you will only end up paying more later on when you realise it needs to be re-done. Not only will it end up costing more, but you will have wasted a year or more, losing traffic all the way, before you realise.

Get Started

I take on limited clients each month so if you would like my help with your small business or personal website, please get in touch.