When a client based in Nairobi Kenya, reached out to us, their website was—well, let’s say it had personality. Pages were sluggish, images took forever to load, and the mobile experience was a complete workout… in the worst way.
“It Looked Great on Launch Day…”
Like many small business owners, they built their site with a DIY spirit and a good-looking theme. But over time, plugins clashed, layouts shifted, and performance took a nosedive. Their bounce rate was climbing, and customers were sending DMs instead of using the broken checkout page.
“We didn’t know what we didn’t know,” said the founder. “We figured the site was just being ‘slow today.’ But it never got better.”
What We Found Behind the Scenes
When our team got in, the backend was a jungle—38 active plugins, some last updated in 2019. Their theme hadn’t been touched in years. Images were over 5MB each. And the homepage? Pulling resources from five different CDNs.
It was doing too much—and not well.
The Fix: Streamline and Rebuild
We started by trimming the fat:
- Reduced plugin count from 38 to 14 (without losing any features)
- Rebuilt the homepage using lightweight blocks
- Compressed images sitewide
- Replaced their bloated theme with a clean, mobile-optimized one
- Integrated a secure checkout with fewer moving parts
Oh, and we added regular automated backups—because we believe in sleep insurance.
Results? Night and Day.
Load time dropped from 7.4 seconds to under 2 seconds. Mobile users started converting again. Even their sales team noticed: “It finally felt like a professional brand—not just a cool logo slapped on a laggy site.”
Moral of the Story?
A beautiful site means nothing if it doesn’t work. And sometimes, starting fresh is the best way to move forward.
Now you know who to talk to if you have similar issues!
