SEO and Performance Audit Services for Site Improvements

First Glance

Wellcare Botanicals is a provider of CBD oil products that support overall health and well-being. The growing public interest in alternative health solutions has propelled the CBD market into a significant position with more consumers turning to CBD for therapeutic benefits. The team at Wellcare Botanicals is enjoying a growth in customers and wanted to ensure their Shopify site was operating a peak performance. Wellcare Botanicals reached out to Sunrise Integration to help audit and refine their online presence. Our experience with health and wellness brands was a perfect fit to tackle this project.

Wellcare Botanicals understands the importance of an efficient ecommerce store. Their core request was to enhance performance and search engine visibility. The goal was to conduct a thorough audit of their Shopify site, pinpointing key areas for speed optimization and SEO improvements. The Sunrise Integration Growth and Retention team came to rescue with our comprehensive CRO, performance and SEO services. Let's dig deeper into how we helped Wellcare operate at their peak!

The Challenge

Auditing an ecommerce site like Wellcare Botanicals can be challenging due to the complex needs and features required to run a store. You have to contend with lots different products, images, variants, categories, subscriptions and third-party services that inject javascript into the site. There are lots of potential "gotchas" that lead to peformance and SEO issues. You need experience to understand what resources are needed versus which ones are uncessesarly slowing the page speed. For example, high-quality images are important for selling products but can make a website slow to load. Other apps like analytics or tracking can load large code-blocks onto the site. Finding the right balance between speed and good functionality is key and requires careful thought.

SEO has its own set of challenges to overcome. You have to keep the website appealing while still following SEO best practices. These two requirements are often at odds with one another. For example, for SEO best-practices you want to use specific keywords to improve search rankings, however this can make the text seem forced or unnatural. You don't want to detracting from the user experience so you have to strike the right balance.

Navigating these challenges requires a understanding of both SEO principles and user experience design. Luckily the Sunrise Integration Growth and Retention team knows what to do. So how did we solve these issues for Wellcare Botanicals?

The Solution

The initial step involves our thorough audit of the entire website. This involves analyzing performance metrics using Google Analytics, Google PageSpeed Insights, and GTMetrics among others. These tools give us insight into various factors such as page load times, file sizes, response times and any site errors. This report helps identify bottlenecks or issues that affect performance.

For Wellcare Botanicals, our audit revealed several opportunities for technical improvements. We updated outdated javascript elements to the latest versions for better performance. We also addressed slow-loading scripts by developing custom solutions and substituting others with lighter versions that loaded more quickly. One such custom change was the replacement of the product carousel. We created a more light weight carousel that supported quicker fullscreen image display.

Our audit also revealed that the custom fonts were a strain on the system. There were many large font files being loaded into the site from slow sources. We replaced all the custom fonts with quick loading Google Font replacements. These were all loaded from the speedy Google CDN. This had an immediate boost on performance.

We also identified apps that were loading unnecessary JS/CSS resources that impacted page speeds. Notably, Wellcare was using only a minor feature of one app—the free shipping threshold display. We removed the app and implemented the specific feature directly on the cart page to streamline the process.

Our next focus was on improving core web vitals. This specifically involved addressing Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) issues on both mobile and desktop views of the website. CLS is a metric that measures the stability of content on a webpage as it loads. Improving CLS is crucial because it impacts how users interact with a site.

For Wellcare Botanicals, enhancing their CLS meant making sure the webpage elements (images, buttons, and texts) load without shifting around. This fix was a collaborative effort with Wellcare, where we fix the targeting areas highlighted by the audit results.

The Outcome

Sunrise Integration addressed several challenges to improve the performance and SEO of Wellcare Botanicals' ecommerce site. Our audit identified areas for improvement, leading to optimized page speeds, enhanced user experience and improved SEO. We implemented these solutions and improved the site's functionality.

Wellcare Botanicals was pleased with the outcomes, expressing satisfaction with the changes and the professional management of their project. They are enthusiastic about continuing our partnership, trusting Sunrise Integration to support their ongoing digital growth. This project demonstrates our ability to effectively meet client needs and drive success in digital ecommerce.