From bankruptcy to success: a website selling online services

Project: English company selling online services

Project features: cooperation began at a stage when sales were falling rapidly and the website was turning into a bankrupt

Main problem: sales fell due to website technical malfunctions

Additional problems:

• slow page loading — up to 40 seconds;
• decreased traffic from search engines.

In general, the problem with the website lies in the fact that it was created in several iterations by different development teams. This led to the technical debt accumulation and a significant decrease in page performance.

• performed a comprehensive audit;
• found problematic areas;
• solved the most critical problems and accelerated the loading time to 1-1.5 s;
• removed a lot of technical debt.

After these steps, the website’s performance and speed increased significantly. Our team’s next actions:

• accelerating Page Speed;
• working on traffic recovery together with SEO contractors;
• launching a full-fledged multisite;
• allowing the client to implement services in 5 niches at once instead of 1.

The hierarchy of this project is Home Page—Subsite—Product Page. We reduced the launch of subsites from a month to a few hours. How we did it:

• adapted the theme and custom plugins;
• transferred the site to Gutenberg and abandoned outdated editors, which allowed us to increase the page loading speed even higher;
• created a service cost calculator with a function that activated various additional services, which led to oversales — the average check increased by more than 1.5 times;
• abandoned the old shopping cart, replacing it with a custom version taking into account all product variations.

An important stage of our work on this project is the integration of tools for effective remarketing. We have implemented the following integrations:

• Google Enhanced Ecommerce Analytics;
• Facebook Feeds;
• Klaviyo.

Each element was integrated with a separate plugin, the integrations’ complexity lay in the products specificity and services provided by our partner. However, we coped with the task, and the targetologists were able to further increase the amount of traffic and sales.

Email newsletters and coupons are a popular sales channel that we implemented. The difficulty was in the percentage markups of variable products with floating prices. What did the client receive at this stage? Significant increases in:

• SEO traffic;
• sales;
• Page Speed;

By this point, the site had already significantly increased its market position and continued to grow. As the business grew, the needs increased, so we then:

• added about 5 payment systems, for some of them there were no ready-made plugins, so we implemented custom solutions;
• integrated multicurrency so that users from Europe could easily purchase our partner’s products.

Previously, the client used a bunch of Excel spreadsheets to control and pay out funds. It was inconvenient and there was a risk of losing important data. We developed an internal ERP system that simplified various processes execution. Today, it includes:

• price quote system;
• user documents verification by a third-party system;
• online chats and real-time notifications;
• backward compatibility with the site — if the order status is updated in the ERP system, it also changes on the site;
• many tables for audits;
• integration with the Telegram bot for managing orders, work, account;
• a ​​reminder system that works automatically from tasks;
• real-time content updates without reloading the page;
• financial reporting.

The investment in developing such a system has paid off many times over, because now the entire business is in one program. It is now much easier for the partner to keep records and work with reports more comfortably.

Some site products are real-time events. You can receive a service not only for one person, but for a group of people. For ticket sales for such events, a multifunctional calendar is used, in which all options are worked out, for example:

• additional sales;
• variations;
• cross-selling and others.

In addition, the seat reservation for an upcoming event is checked in real time. Reservation, cancellation, purchase systems have also been implemented. After booking, the order is entered into the ERP, where financial statements and other documents are then generated. This system helped the partner increase sales several times, because orders were processed incredibly quickly.

• the entire business in one program;
• a convenient ERP system for order fulfillment;
• automatic generation of financial statements;
• sales of basic products increased several times;
• 22 subsites with different niches;
• multilingualism – 3 languages;
• multicurrency – 2 currencies;
• 10,000+ products;
• more than 10,000 customers.

Even if the online store is at the stage of bankruptcy, this does not mean that the situation is irreparable. Today, this project is a successful business that continues to develop with us.