Mage-OS Case Studies

Pedal to the Metal: Acceleration of Titan Rig’s Magento Store by Amasty

sergej-derzap — Mon, 21 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT

A popular US-based provider of PC cooling components, Titan Rig, helps thousands of customers keep their technical equipment at maximum performance with minimum risks via their Magento Open Source store. However, due to poor implementation they were facing multiple technical and performance related challenges.

To accelerate the big rig hauling their entire business forward and help them smoothly deal with any traffic, the company turned to Amasty’s “repair shop” with a request to realize Magento’s full potential.

Drop-Off

After contacting Amasty, who developed over 80% of the extensions used on the cooling components store, Titan Rig explained that the maintenance of their Magento-powered website was being outsourced. However, the results of their cooperation so far had been underwhelming.

Many store pages took from 12 to whopping 25 seconds to load and search results appeared in no less than 16 seconds. Waiting times got even longer in the evenings, when the traffic was at its peak. Worse than that, the website would regularly crash and stay down for around 10 minutes – on a lucky day, that is.

No doubt, all of this had a very negative effect on organic traffic, customer satisfaction, conversions, and online sales. But Titan Rig was not looking to move e-commerce systems. They appreciated Magento’s flexible, omnichannel, and open-source nature and simply wanted to have their store optimized.

Inspections & Diagnosis

A performance audit of Titan Rig’s store unveiled a clear imbalance in server resources; they were overpowered for the slow morning traffic yet too weak to handle peak times in the evenings.

Testing also helped to detect a number of code errors and Magento best practices violations, which caused loading speed decline. Some of the key issues were:

ObjectManager direct call in template files
ObjectManager in module logic
Too much logic in PHTML templates
Block objects created in template files
Plugins with around() instead of before() and after()
cacheable=“false” in layout handles

Repair Works

To balance out server resources, Amasty’s “mechanics” decided to enable auto-scaling. Thanks to Magento’s flexible hosting, the team easily activated additional server nodes and further customized hosting services to match the website’s traffic patterns. All these efforts helped to ensure that the website would smoothly tackle even peak loads.

Fixing all the uncovered coding issues and implementing Magento best practices was all it took to significantly increase the website speed. With pages loading in just 2-4 seconds and Time to First Byte (TTFB) equalling 150-180 milliseconds, Titan Rig’s store officially entered the green ‘Good’ speed zone.

Engine Tuning

The results were already excellent but Amasty knew that Magento could go even faster. The team offered to replace the existing MySQL-powered search engine with Algolia –a lightning-fast search technology that fit both the Magento environment and Titan Rig’s business needs like a glove. Implementing Algolia on the store helped to achieve more relevant search results that fully loaded in under 2-3 seconds instead of the crazy 16.

Test Drive

With the page load speed raised from 15-25 seconds to 2-4 and Algolia search showing results in just 2-3 seconds, Titan Rig’s desktop Magento store got a definite ‘Passed’ in Core Web Vitals Assessment by Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

Kevin Keating, Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Titan Rig, provided more details on the results of the collaboration:

“We’ve seen a significant improvement in our overall traffic, and the website has been better equipped to handle it. We’ve had better visibility in Google because we don’t have any more errors on our page. We have A+ ratings on other testing websites, and even our customers have seen a noticeable improvement in the website’s performance.”

Customization

Convinced of Magento’s potential and Amasty’s competence, Titan Rig decided to re-launch one of the projects they had unsuccessfully attempted with the freelancers: the implementation of a real-time PC cable configurator. The solution was aimed at helping customers personalize their cables on the website by choosing different plugs and combining as many as 40 different cable colors.

Because of Magento’s extensive capabilities for customization and integration, the Amasty team successfully developed the product configurator and integrated it with Titan Rig’s entire e-commerce system. Now, whenever a client creates a unique cable right on the website, the order specifications are automatically transferred via Linnworks and APIs to the warehouse. There, the magic of creating one-of-a-kind cables happens.

Back on The Road Again

Refined and upgraded, Titan Rig’s store hit the road – now faster, more stable, and ready to handle any traffic. The enhanced Magento performance helped the company to boost customer satisfaction, conversions, and sales. The cable configurator, a brand-new website feature, successfully attracts new clients and makes the company stand out among competitors.

Pleased with the revitalized Magento store, Titan Rig now entrust Amasty with the full ongoing maintenance of their website.

“It’s the professionalism that’s most impressive. They’re honest. I’ve never worked with a company that’s so responsive, even when dealing with other third-party software applications. They don’t just let things sit around. I feel I can trust them with our website.” — Kevin Keating, VP of Marketing and Sales at Titan Rig.

Happily ever after - Online Spy Shop and Magento 2

mage-os-team — Sun, 12 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hollywood love stories usually start with some ups and downs in a relationship and then a big showdown – preferably with a great sunset as a backdrop. True love stories are often much simpler: You find the perfect match and stay together. In the case of Magento 2 and Online Spy Shop, a UK-based company offering surveillance equipment for companies, governments and individuals, one can certainly speak of true love.

How it began

Already in 2018, Steve Roberts, proprietor of OSS Technology Ltd - Online Spy Shop, decided for Magento 2 to take his existing online store to the next level. Steve explains: “We were looking for four elements in a new platform: We wanted it future-proof, we wanted security, ease-of-use and a platform that allowed us to grow.” Although Magento 2 was still in its infancy at that time, Steve and his team believed in the strength and solidity of it and its possibilities for exceptional growth. Steve: “It was a great choice we made, and we are still happy with this choice”.

Top 5 functionalities to fall in love

Back in 2018 – and still valid today – Online Spy Shop’s USP was very simple: transparency.

“For us, transparency means that we provide a good service and offer good products AND treat all clients the same regardless of status – which implies that we always uphold integrity”, Steve explains the company values.

To back this, the online store has, from the beginning, certain functions considered mandatory:

Customer reviews: These show real examples of customer satisfaction to generate trust. (Do you want to implement such a powerful feature? Read more here.)
Site search: Helps the customer to find his product as quickly as possible without any distraction – if not wanted.
Content: Shows that the company has expert knowledge and is, therefore, trustworthy.
Live Chat: To offer superior customer service by answering in real time.
Address Validation verification service: Suggests validated addresses for fast and correct delivery.

They also set a focus on a streamlined and user-friendly yet comprehensive checkout. Including the acceptance of all payments that they needed and being compatible with PCA Predict, they met their expectations to provide their customers with the possibility of placing an order with minimum friction.

Make an effort to grow the love

Surveillance equipment is used by most people these days, whether that be a non-technical individuals using home CCTV to businesses, large corporations, private sectors, public sectors and law enforcement. In short, surveillance equipment can be used as a positive aid to gather important video / audio evidence in sometimes difficult and sensitive situations.

It is, therefore, not surprising that a provider of such equipment should also make sure that the user experience in the store is as positive as possible. Having this in mind, Online Spy Shop implemented plenty of improvements and optimizations over time to ensure a great customer experience.

The first thing customer will notice (and fall in love with) is the significantly improved top navigation bar. Not only did Online Spy Shop include a variety of trust elements such as the delivery time, positive reviews and an easily accessible phone support, but also a focus on “Made in UK”-products and UK-based support.

And to help find the customer’s love interest more easily, Online Spy Shop highlights its bestseller products and offers a mega menu, including a ton of important information. Once you decided on a product, you’ll find more specifications on the according product page. But if you want to win over the customer, you’ll need to offer more – and that’s what Online Spy Shop is doing: On the dedicated product page, not only find the exact delivery date and the possibility of social sharing (and who doesn’t want to share one’s new love with the world) together with express payment options.

The check-out page – provided by OneStepCheckout for Magento 2 – lifts the purchasing process and, therefore, the user experience to another level.

The love for performance

In 2021, Online Spy Shop wanted to boost the website’s findability and increase the browsing experience even more. They did this by launching a new version of the website using Hyvä - a frontend theme for Magento. Steve explains the reason: “The whole point of using Hyvä Themes is the improvement of the Core Web Vitals, which leads to more visibility by ranking higher in Search Engine Result Pages (SERP). And actually, it allows a better, safer and faster browsing experience for any visitor landing on our website.”

Online Spy Shop didn’t stop just there but put extra effort in to become as trustworthy as they need to be for customers of such a business. Steve: “We did that by cramming as much information as we could in that rectangle above the fold. Why? Consumers’ attention span is reducing to just a few seconds, and we wanted to make sure that they’ll get all the important and useful information as quickly as possible.”

To differentiate from the competition, they provided additional transparency by highlighting customer reviews, dispatch time and delivery fees, which is reiterated on the product pages too. By showing the width and breadth of their product assortment – not only showing the range in a mega menu but also highlighting and providing quick links to best-selling products – they also stand out from the competition.

Check-out with your love-interest

Once the customer has found the perfect piece, Online Spy Shop offers an easy-to-use checkout.

For those who don’t want any strings attached, even without a registration or a required login. Email, address and phone number validation is self-evident, but the check-out also offers additional features such as address lookup and autofill.

“We implemented OneStepCheckout in the beginning and are still more than happy with that decision”, says Steve. “What we can clearly see in the various iterations of the checkout design is that the business made sure customers are focused on completing checkout and not tempted to click away from this page.” The iterations include the removal of navigation bars and various icons, but also the replacement of Sage Pay with Stripe so that the customers can stay on the same page to pay.

Although these efforts are certainly made to maximize the checkout conversion, it adds to the flawless user experience on the site. Store owners who want an equally good user experience can find more information here.

Bright future

In every relationship, you’ll need to make an effort to keep the fire burning. Online Spy Shop has found its perfect match with Magento and was – and is – able to meet customer requirements through ongoing improvements and optimizations.

He also found a great agency - Foundation Commerce - to support him in his next growth phase using new innovative technologies like Hyvä. As Steve Robert puts it:

“Ryan’s credentials and skillset are a rare find and bringing Foundation Commerce agency onboard was the best decision we’ve made_.”_

Perfect match with technology and people leads to the customer’s trust, which is the base of a longtime relationship and the “happily ever after”.

For those who need a bit of support finding the way to the customers’ heart, please, check out the various features Magento offers you.