Buy4Pets Online is the sister-brand of the popular brick-and-mortar pet store, Pet Stop Discount Warehouse, with shop locations across the west of Ireland.
They are dedicated to providing top-quality pet supplies at affordable prices, with great customer service behind it all. Buy4Pets Online is 100% Irish owned, and operated by a fantastic team in Ireland.
Buy4Pets approached us to help with a new site launch which had experienced some challenges. The new site looked fantastic, but had issues with bugs, site speed, SEO performance and third-party integrations. All of which were impacting online revenue.
Our challenge was to stabilise the platform, increase site speed, resolve the bugs and ultimately assist in driving online revenue.
To kick off the project, we performed a detailed code audit of the Buy4Pets site. This gave us an initial understanding of how the code was set up and some insight into the source of the core issues. We used this to generate a list of top priorities for Buy4Pets Online.
The first step in improving site stability was to migrate hosting to our own managed hosting service. We increased the hosting capacity to help stabilise site performance and used our monitoring tools and specialised Ops team to assess potential causes for the stability issues and implement some initial solutions.
We then set about a series of bug fixes and performance improvements, focusing on those which had the biggest impact on customer experience, operational efficiency and overall site revenue.
Throughout this process, we worked closely with the Buy4Pets Online team to ensure progress updates were constantly available and priorities could be adjusted quickly as new information was uncovered.
Kanuka Digital has been fantastic to work with! Their team is highly professional, knowledgeable, and communicative, keeping us informed every step of the way. Their expertise in web development, fixes, and ongoing improvements has made a huge difference. We truly appreciate their dedication and clear communication—highly recommended for any business looking for a reliable digital partner!
Gary Dolan
eCommerce Manager, Buy4Pets Online
Improving site performance and perceived site speed was the top priority. We used BlackFire to analyse site performance at a process level. This allowed us to see which individual processes were contributing most to site slow down. Armed with this information, we were able to target improvements where site speed could be most improved.
We implemented Jetpack CDN to optimise the loading of site imagery, CSS and JavaScript. We implemented WP SuperCache to ensure that heavier processes which contributed to slow site speed were cached and therefore could run more quickly for customers. And we implemented Autoptimize to further minify and cache scripts, CSS and HTML. Critical to this process, we monitored performance as a result of each change and optimised to ensure maximum performance gains were achieved.
Bug fixing can be a long and painful process. It is essential that bugs are fixed in an order which most impacts site revenue, either through conversion rate improvement, customer experience improvement or operational improvements, ensuring orders are processed in an efficient and commercially appropriate manner.
We made improvements in the checkout process, improved tax handling and fixed a series of user experience bugs across the shopping journey. Each making gradual improvements to online revenue and operational efficiency.
One of the best things about WordPress can also be one of the biggest risks to site performance. Plugins offer easy access to a huge array of new functionality, but too many plugins on one site increases the risk of conflicts and site bugs, and contributes to poorer site speed.
We audited the plugins used on the Buy4Pets Online site and made a series of improvements. We removed plugins which were not in use, or not essential. We updated plugins which required updates. And replaced plugins where site speed could be improved through an alternative approach.
Improving SEO and paid search performance was critical in growing online revenue for Buy4Pets Online. We are proud to work closely with our sister company, Proof3, the digital marketing and analytics experts in our group. The Proof3 team conducted audits of both SEO and paid search to ensure a clear strategy was in place to drive online revenue in both the short and long term.
We worked closely with the Proof3 team to collaborate on insights and recommendations, to implement SEO improvements and ensure the site was set up to gain maximum benefit from paid search activity. This involved on-site changes, site speed optimisation and product data improvements to power paid search activity.
We’re a straight-talking web development agency that excel in the design and development of eCommerce stores, learning solutions and lead generation websites.