When a growing New Zealand online retailer approached us about slow site speeds and inconsistent performance, they were frustrated. Their WooCommerce store looked great but customers were bouncing before pages even loaded.
After migrating to Red Jet’s high-performance WordPress hosting, their site now loads 3x faster, checkout abandonment is down, and their Google PageSpeed scores are firmly in the green.
Here’s how we helped them go from sluggish to blazing-fast in just 48 hours.
🛒 The Client: A Mid-Sized NZ eCommerce Retailer
- Platform: WordPress + WooCommerce
- Monthly traffic: ~25,000 visitors
- Previous host: Budget shared hosting (cPanel, Apache, PHP 7.4)
- Core problems:
- Slow product and category page load times (4–6 seconds)
- Poor Google PageSpeed mobile scores
- Admin area lagging during order processing
- No caching or offsite backups
🔍 Before Migration: Bottlenecks & Breakdown
We ran a full site audit and identified several issues:
- ❌ No object caching – every database query was run fresh on every visit
- ❌ No full-page cache – server was rendering every page dynamically
- ❌ Bloated theme and unused plugins
- ❌ Large images loading uncompressed
- ❌ Old PHP version (7.4) with poor performance on WooCommerce
- ❌ No CDN – global users were hitting the NZ server directly
Baseline Performance Metrics:
| Metric | Before Migration |
|---|---|
| Homepage Load Time (GTmetrix) | 5.6 seconds |
| Time to First Byte (TTFB) | 850ms |
| PageSpeed Mobile Score | 52/100 |
| WooCommerce Checkout Load Time | 6.1 seconds |
| WordPress Admin Response | Sluggish, up to 4s on Orders screen |
🚀 What Red Jet Delivered
🔧 New Hosting Stack:
- NGINX + PHP 8.2 + MariaDB
- Redis object caching enabled
- Full-page caching via WP Rocket
- UpdraftPlus Premium for daily offsite backups
- Cloudflare CDN + HTTPS forced sitewide
- Real-time uptime and performance monitoring
🛠 Additional Fixes:
- Replaced bloated theme with GeneratePress + GenerateBlocks
- Compressed and resized images using ShortPixel
- Disabled and removed unused plugins
- Enabled lazy loading and preloading of fonts
✅ After Migration: Results That Speak for Themselves
After the move and optimisation, the difference was immediate.
Performance Gains:
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Homepage Load Time | 5.6s | 1.6s |
| TTFB | 850ms | 190ms |
| PageSpeed Mobile Score | 52/100 | 97/100 |
| WooCommerce Checkout | 6.1s | 2.1s |
| Admin Panel Speed | 4s+ | Sub-1s |
Business Impact:
- 🔼 28% reduction in checkout abandonment
- 🔼 19% increase in mobile conversion rate
- 🔼 2x faster admin workflow for order processing
- 🔒 Peace of mind with automated, offsite backups
💬 What the Client Said
“The speed improvement was massive. We used to get complaints about slow checkout, now it just works. Red Jet handled everything with zero downtime and even cleaned up our plugins. Highly recommend!”
🧰 Thinking of Migrating?
Whether you’re running a blog, membership site, or full eCommerce store – performance matters. Red Jet gives you:
- ✅ Managed migration with zero downtime
- ✅ UpdraftPlus Premium backups included
- ✅ Redis caching, PHP 8+, and Cloudflare CDN
- ✅ Ongoing optimisation and support
👉 Request a free migration audit
🎯 Final Thoughts
A slow site costs you money – lost sales, lower SEO rankings, and frustrated customers. Red Jet doesn’t just move your WordPress site, we tune, secure, and optimise it to perform at its best.
Ready for a faster, more reliable WordPress experience? Let Red Jet help you make the move and make it count.
