WIN Equipment Website Speed Transformation - Case Study

Sometimes the most frustrating projects turn out to be the ones that sharpen our skills the most.

That is exactly how it felt when I received an urgent request from Win Equipment over a weekend. They needed help moving their website from the old CloudNow hosting to Niagahoster shared hosting.

The migration should have taken less than an hour, but this short project became more challenging than I expected. The backup file was quite large, the old hosting had no SSH access, compressing the backup in the public_html directory failed several times, and the download speed was also slow.

In the end, I managed to move the website successfully on the same day. That gave Win Equipment a chance to ask what else could be improved on their site.

During an online meeting, I explained that the website was slow, had several technical SEO issues, and the content was not well optimized.

With the goal of improving user experience and SEO performance, Win Equipment decided to begin a gradual improvement process, starting with the website loading speed.

That became the beginning of a more complete transformation: switching to GeneratePress Premium, converting from WPBakery to Blocks, reducing unnecessary plugins, and moving the hosting to a VPS with proper optimization. Together, those steps brought a major improvement to the site’s stability and performance.

Why Website Speed Matters

In today’s digital world, website speed is something you simply cannot ignore. Users expect information to load quickly and be easy to access. If a website feels too slow, visitors usually leave and move to a faster alternative.

Win Equipment was facing a serious speed problem. Their PageSpeed Insights scores were only 27 on mobile and 36 on desktop, and the site was failing Core Web Vitals. The website simply took too long to load.

This was not only a user experience issue. It also had a major impact on several key areas of the website’s online presence:

1. User Experience:

   • A bad first impression: a slow website creates a weak first impression. If the page does not load within the first few seconds, visitors tend to close the tab and look elsewhere.
   • Lower engagement: a slow site makes people less willing to explore more pages, which reduces time on site and content interaction.

2. SEO:

   • Lower rankings in search results: Google uses speed as one of the ranking signals. A slow site is more likely to appear lower in search results, which reduces visibility and organic traffic.
   • Core Web Vitals: these metrics measure loading, interactivity, and visual stability. Failing them means the website is not providing the kind of experience users expect.

3. Conversion and retention:

   • Lower conversion rate: slow loading can frustrate visitors and interrupt buying or sign-up flows, which directly affects sales.
   • Lower retention: people who experience a slow website are less likely to come back. Better loading speed improves the chance they return later.

Understanding why speed matters was the first step toward fixing it. With a broader optimization approach that included GeneratePress Premium, WPBakery to Blocks conversion, plugin reduction, and VPS migration with proper tuning, we were able to bring major improvements to Win Equipment’s performance and stability.

Approach and Methodology

Initial Analysis

I started with a comprehensive performance audit to identify every issue affecting website speed. That analysis covered the theme, unnecessary plugins, inefficient code, and non-optimal hosting configuration.

Strategy Used

I applied several main strategies to reach the project goal:

• Replaced the page builder from WPBakery to GenerateBlocks / Blocks.
• Rebuilt all pages with GenerateBlocks and GeneratePress.
• Reduced unused plugins and replaced slower or weaker-security plugins with better alternatives, without removing important functionality.
• Moved the site from shared hosting to VPS with a properly optimized LEMP stack setup.

Services Required

1. VPS setup service
2. WordPress speed optimization
3. WordPress blocks conversion

Implementation

Main Steps

1. Theme and Page Builder Migration

I changed the website theme from Structure to GeneratePress Premium. I chose it because GeneratePress is extremely lightweight and speed-focused. I use this theme on all of my own websites and client projects.

• One of the fastest themes in the WordPress ecosystem
• A popular theme used on millions of WordPress websites
• Built by a developer who is well known in the WordPress community and has been around for years
• Cleaner code and a lighter structure
• Less CSS and JavaScript to load
• Easier to customize and extend later
• Flexible enough that a future theme change should not be necessary

2. Rebuilding Pages with GenerateBlocks

I rebuilt all pages using GenerateBlocks and GeneratePress, including the homepage, pages, shop pages, single product pages, blog posts, and archive pages.

This approach reduced plugin usage and removed unnecessary code, making the website lighter and faster.

3. Reducing Plugin Count

I reduced the plugin count from 43 to 19, keeping only the plugins that were truly needed. That lowered server load and helped the website load faster.

4. Advanced Speed Optimization

To improve speed even further, I applied several additional optimizations:

Removing unused CSS and JavaScript: using tools like Asset Manager and Debloat to identify and remove unused assets.

Server-level caching: using FastCGI cache to store dynamic page copies and reduce server load.

PHP-FPM optimization: adjusting PHP-FPM configuration to improve PHP processing performance.

Switching the slider plugin from Revolution Slider to a lighter and faster option, Smart Slider 3.

5. VPS Migration with a LEMP Stack

I moved the website from shared hosting to a VPS using a LEMP stack: Linux, Nginx, MySQL, and PHP. This gave much better performance and greater control over server configuration. I also built bash scripts for automatic backup and restore, and provided staging and development environments.

The backup system looked like this:

• Daily backups with 7-day retention
• Weekly backups with 4-week retention
• Monthly backups with 2-month retention

When a restore is needed, the client can choose from the available backup files, including daily, weekly, monthly, and manual backups, using just one terminal command. The restore process is very fast and usually takes less than 5 minutes.

6. Security Hardening

Ninja Firewall installation: I installed Ninja Firewall to help protect the website from security threats and configured it to match the VPS server setup.

Additional server-level security: I also applied extra hardening on Nginx, MariaDB, PHP, and the firewall for stronger protection.

Results and Impact: PageSpeed Insights Improved by 240.74%

Performance Improvement

The performance improvement was significant:

Metric	Before Optimization	After Optimization	Improvement (%)
Mobile PageSpeed score	27	92	240.74%
Desktop PageSpeed score	36	99	177.78%

PageSpeed After Screenshot

Positive Impact

Faster page loading gave visitors a better experience and reduced bounce rate.

Improved security made the website safer from external threats thanks to the hardening steps.

Better operational efficiency came from fewer plugins and server optimization, which reduced server load and improved stability.

I also applied additional optimizations to improve other metrics, including Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO.

Ready to Improve Your Website Performance?

If your website is slow, takes too long to load, or has technical SEO issues, we can help.

Learn how our optimization strategy can significantly improve your website speed, user experience, and SEO visibility.

You can explore WordPress speed optimization or WordPress blocks conversion if your site is still using a heavy page builder.