Website Cleanup And Speed Optimization for Local Plumbing Service

Project overview: This client ran a successful local plumbing service that had operated for 8 years. Their website was built 5 years prior, and over time they had installed dozens of plugins to add new features. They did not remove old unused plugins when they stopped using them. Their mobile page load time was over 8 seconds, and their Google PageSpeed score was 32 out of 100. They contacted us because they noticed their search rankings had dropped over the previous 6 months, and very few of their mobile visitors were filling out their contact form.

Client Goals

• Improve mobile page load time to under 2 seconds
• Increase their Google PageSpeed performance score to 80 or higher
• Fix broken contact forms and layout issues that appeared on mobile devices
• Remove unused plugins and bloat without breaking any site functionality
• Keep all of their existing content, service pages, and customer reviews intact

Full Audit Findings

We first ran a full site audit before making any changes. We found 19 inactive plugins that were still loading code on every page even though they had not been used for over 2 years. We found over 300 uncompressed images that were 3 to 10 times larger than they needed to be. We found broken links to old service pages, and a caching plugin that had been misconfigured so it was not improving performance at all. We also found several layout breakages on mobile where buttons were overlapping, and the contact form was cut off at the edge of the screen.

Many of the performance issues were not caused by bad design. They had accumulated slowly over time as the business added new features, changed service providers, and tested different tools. Most websites that are more than 3 years old develop this exact type of bloat if no regular maintenance is performed.

The Work We Completed

First we created a full off site backup of the entire site so we could restore anything if needed. We safely removed all 19 inactive plugins. We replaced heavy plugins with lighter weight alternatives where necessary, for example replacing a heavy form builder with Fluent Forms which uses far less server resources. We compressed and optimized every image on the site, and set up automatic image compression for any new images the client uploads in the future.

We configured proper server level caching, removed unused CSS and Javascript code that was loading on pages where it was not needed, and fixed all broken links and mobile layout issues. We also ran a full security scan and removed old admin user accounts that were no longer in use. We tested every page, form, and link to ensure nothing was broken after we applied our changes.

Post Launch Results

After all changes were applied, the mobile page load time dropped from 8.1 seconds to 1.1 seconds. Their Google PageSpeed performance score increased from 32 to 94. Two weeks after the changes went live, the client reported that their contact form submissions had increased by 34 percent. They also noticed their position in local search results for their most important service keywords had improved. The client no longer receives support messages from customers saying the site feels slow or does not work on their phone.

The client was able to get all of these performance improvements without paying for a full website redesign, and without losing any of the search rankings they had built up over 5 years of content creation.

Key Takeaway

Many business owners do not realize how much revenue they lose to a slow website. Most visitors will leave a site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load on mobile. A speed optimization project often provides a higher return on investment than a full website redesign, because you get all of the performance benefits while keeping all of your existing content and search rankings.

Want similar results for your website?

If your WordPress site loads slowly, looks broken on mobile, or feels bloated from years of unused plugins, we can run a full audit and complete the same optimization work for you.