The Challenge
The owner runs a small tour company and the website is the till. Travellers find a cruise and tap Book Now, usually on a phone. When the site came to us it had three problems that all cost bookings.
- It was slow where it counted. Google's real-visitor data showed the server taking more than four seconds to answer and the main image taking more than five to appear.
- The speed test was flattering it. The old host's caching plugin held the page's scripts back, so a lab test saw a fast page while a visitor's phone did all the work afterwards. With the scripts counted, the homepage scored 40 out of 100 on mobile.
- The phone menu stalled. The first tap on the menu took three to four seconds to respond, and the layout shifted as it loaded.
On top of that the site carried tables and settings from its old host, and nine plugins it no longer needed.
The Approach
Step 1. Move it without losing a single address
We copied the site to our servers and tested the copy on a temporary address before anything went live. All 236 of the old site's redirects came across. After the switch we crawled every one of the 546 addresses the site answers to and every one returned a working page.
Step 2. Rebuild how it loads
We weighed what the homepage actually sends to a phone and cut it from 3.6 MB to 0.93 MB. Scripts load in the right order instead of being held back, the phone menu answers in about 150 milliseconds, and the Book Now button was kept on its fast path so it opens in about half a second. On the copy before the switch, the homepage went from 40 to 81 on mobile and from 79 to 93 on desktop.
Step 3. Clear out what the old host left
We removed 17 database tables and about 300 settings the old host had left behind, which shrank the data WordPress loads on every page from 635 KB to 365 KB. Nine unused plugins were deleted and the premium plugins the site relies on now run on licences from our pool, at no extra cost.
Step 4. Keep going after launch
The owner kept asking and we kept fixing. Across four requests our developers sent close to a hundred replies, with a first answer in about an hour and a half on average, working through layout, the mobile menu, speed and the site's SEO checks. Our SEO readiness check went from 82 to 100 between October 8 and October 22.
The Results
- The server answers real visitors in 251 milliseconds, down from 4,269, in Google's field data from October 2 to October 30.
- The main image appears in 2.5 seconds instead of 5.1 for real visitors.
- The page holds still while it loads. Layout shift fell from 0.16 to 0.01.
- The phone menu opens on the first tap, in about 0.15 seconds instead of three to four.
- The weekly mobile speed score rose from 89 to 96 over October, and desktop from 97 to 99.
- 100% uptime for the first 39 days, through the move and every change after it.
"I'm really happy i found this company. You guys have been amazing with fixing a lot of my problems and answering all my questions."
The owner, in a support ticket, October 2026
Why It Worked
- We measured what visitors feel, not what a test sees. The old setup won the lab test and lost the customer. Real-visitor data showed where the time went.
- The move and the tune-up were one job. Because we moved the site ourselves, we could fix what the old host left behind before it went live instead of carrying it over.
- Asking costs nothing. A flat plan means the owner sends every question, so the small things got fixed too.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did the move cost anything?
No. Migration is free on every plan, and so is the speed work that follows it.
Were any old links broken?
No. All 236 redirects came across, and a crawl of all 546 addresses after the switch found every one working.
Is this the same plan every site gets?
Yes. One site at the standard $89 a month, with the same servers, scans and senior developers as everyone else.
The Stack — Named, Not Hidden
We tell you exactly what runs underneath. No proprietary black box.
Business Outcomes
- →Real visitors get an answer from the server in a quarter of a second, down from more than four, measured by Google from people actually using the site.
- →The phone menu opens on the first tap, and the Book Now button still answers in about half a second.
- →The page no longer jumps while it loads. The layout-shift score went from 0.16 to 0.01.
- →Not one minute of downtime in the first 39 days, through the move and every change after it.
Founder & Lead Developer
20+ years full-stack development, WordPress, AI tools & agents
Colton is the founder of TopSyde with 20+ years of full-stack development experience spanning WordPress, cloud infrastructure, and AI-powered tooling. He specializes in performance optimization, server architecture, and building AI agents for automated site management.
