Tour guide Website in Santorini Performance with Hosting Migration

Information Details:

Customer
Santorini tour guide
Country
Greece
Case Type
Website Migration
Date
2024
Price
Duration
1 Day

Project Overview

The client operates a Santorini tour guide website catering to travelers planning guided experiences across the island. While the tours themselves were high quality, the website failed to reflect that experience. Slow load times, unreliable hosting, and poor performance during peak traffic periods were causing potential customers to leave before exploring tours or completing bookings.

With most visitors arriving via mobile devices and organic search, speed and reliability were critical. Our goal was to transform the website into a fast, responsive, and trustworthy platform that supported trip planning and encouraged bookings. This project focused on migrating the site to a high-performance hosting environment and optimizing it to meet Google’s Core Web Vitals standards.

Challenges

Before the hosting migration, the Santorini tour guide website faced several performance issues that directly impacted user experience and revenue.

The Problem

  • Extremely Slow Loading Times: Pages were taking 10+ seconds to load, which caused users to abandon the site before engaging.
  • High Bounce Rates: Frustrated mobile and desktop users left the site after waiting too long for content to load.
  • Hosting Limitations: The previous hosting provider lacked server resources, causing performance issues during peak traffic times.
  • Negative SEO Impact: Slow speeds harmed organic search rankings, pushing key pages lower on Google search results.
  • Low Engagement and Conversions: Users struggled to complete bookings for fitness classes due to delays in page interactions.

Objectives

The core goal was to drastically improve website speed and performance by: Migrating the website to a faster, reliable hosting platform. Reducing page loading times to under 2 seconds. Enhancing site responsiveness, especially for mobile users. Improving user experience to boost engagement and conversion rates. Restoring SEO performance by meeting Google’s Core Web Vitals standards.

The Process

1. Initial Performance Audit We began with a comprehensive performance analysis using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and pingdom. Key findings included: Page Speed: Average load time was 13.5 seconds. Hosting Limitations: Shared hosting couldn’t handle database queries or traffic spikes efficiently. Critical Errors: Poor server response times (TTFB) and unoptimized caching were the main culprits slowing the site. We recommended switching to Other hosting I recommend, a cloud-based hosting platform optimized for WordPress, to resolve these issues.

2. Hosting Migration After finalizing hosting requirements with the client, we began migrating the site to its new environment.

Steps Taken:

  • Backup: Created a full backup of the website (including files, database, and configurations) to ensure no data loss during migration.
  • DNS Update: Reconfigured domain settings to point to the new server. Staging Environment: Set up the website on new hosting environment for tests to ensure everything worked smoothly before going live.
  • Performance Plugins: Installed caching tools such as WP Rocket for site optimization and set up CDN integration (Content Delivery Network) for faster global content delivery. Migration Time: The entire transfer process was completed in just 2 hours. 3.
  • Optimization Post-Migration Once hosted on the new platform, we performed additional optimizations to maximize performance, including:
  • Compressing oversized images using TinyPNG. Minimizing CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files to reduce page size. Enabling lazy loading for images and videos. Monitoring server resource allocation to ensure smooth operations during high traffic periods. Tools Used: Pingdom Google Core Web Vitals metrics to refine speed and usability.
  • Testing and Validation Before the new hosting went live, we tested the website to confirm performance improvements:

 

Page Speed Tests: Used GTmetrix and Pingdom to analyze speed improvements. User Testing: Verified that critical actions like bookings, navigation, and form submissions worked flawlessly. Cross-Device Testing: Checked responsiveness across desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. Key results: load times decreased from 13.5 seconds to 1.9 seconds.

Results

Results

Within 1 month after launching the migrated site, Client site experienced dramatic improvements: Lightning-Fast Loading Times: Average page load times reduced from 11.2 seconds to 1.7 seconds, exceeding Google’s recommended speed benchmarks. Reduced Bounce Rates: Bounce rates dropped by 50%, as users were now able to access content quickly. SEO Rankings Boost: Speed improvements positively impacted Google’s Core Web Vitals assessment, leading to a 35% increase in organic traffic over the next 3 months. Higher Conversions: Booking completion rates increased by 80% due to improved user experience and faster interactions.

User Feedback: Customers praised the site’s responsiveness and speed during their interactions. Before vs. After Metric Before Migration After Migration Page Load Time 11.2 seconds 1.7 seconds Bounce Rate 78% 38% Online Booking Conversion Rate 5% 9% Organic Traffic (Monthly) ~300 visits ~405 visits

Key Features Implemented After Hosting Migration Improved Server Response Time: Server response times dropped from 4 seconds to under 0.4 seconds. Global CDN Integration: Faster loading for international users Cloudflare Streamlined Performance Monitoring: Real-time monitoring of website health to ensure speed consistency during peak traffic periods.

Client testimonial

Related Case Studies

More case studies. Real outcomes.

PROJECTS

Website Redesign

PROJECTS

Website Redesign

PROJECTS

Website Migration

You like this case study? Share it with your network.

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Reddit