Le CFO masqué: How to Optimize a WordPress Site Performance For a Better Customer Experience
Le CFO masqué was struggling to offer a great user experience to its clientele. The CMS they were using, WordPress, couldn’t solve for the specific needs of their niche audience nor could it support a high volume of traffic. Even with the use of various plugins, visitors and clients were experiencing technical issues that negatively impacted the business. Conversion rates were low, additional manual tasks had to be performed and constant technical issues had to be corrected, all because of the limitations of the platform.
Let’s dig into the different ways we were able to help Le CFO masqué solve the above mentioned problems. But first, here’s a little context.
A Fast-Growing Company Hindered by the Limits of WordPress
Le CFO masqué is a company that provides Excel and Power BI training to finance professionals, companies, individuals and government employees to name a few. Although it offers in person training, the majority of the courses are given online, directly on its website.
Through its growing pains, the company owner at Le CFO masqué quickly realized that WordPress, the CMS used to create and manage the website, has many limitations. Even if they tried to use various plugins - in this case, WooCommerce, LearnDash LMS Plugin, ACF, bbPress, etc. - the CMS didn’t offer a great user experience, with technical issues occurring on a regular basis. Moreover, Le CFO masqué’s website couldn’t keep up with the users’ specific needs and the increasing traffic. Although it was a functional site, it was not serving customers in an optimal way.
How Developing Custom Web Features and Implementing a Scalable Platform Boosted the Performance of a WordPress Site
Le CFO masqué mandated Unik Web to develop custom features to make its site more efficient and to better answer user’s requirements. Our client also expressed an interest in optimizing its website for search engines using SEO and improving conversion rates.
Services
- Development of plug-ins and custom features within the WordPress CMS environment
- Setting up a flexible and scalable hosting environment on NGINX
- UX/UI Design consulting services
- Implementation of a Content Delivery Network (CDN) strategy to optimize performance
- Implementation of a cache memory strategy at the server level to optimize performance
- SEO consulting services
+ 400,000
visits per month
supported by the website
The Challenge: Customizing WordPress Plugins to Meet the Needs of a Niche and Diverse Clientele
Le CFO masqué’s clientele is made up of parapublic organizations and corporate businesses who wish to offer accredited training to their staff, either face-to-face or via the online learning platform on lecfomasque.com. These customers often express very specific needs to which the installed extensions simply could not respond. Therefore, Unik had to extend the functionalities available in WordPress in order to adapt the tools to the reality of users. By doing so, we offered visitors a better experience on a more efficient website.
WordPress CMS Optimization for a Better Customer Experience
Unik Web set up a staging environment to test all the custom changes without interfering with the live site. As Le CFO masqué generated a huge amount of web traffic, we needed to make sure that the changes did not affect the visitors’ experience. The staging platform was also useful to support the strong growth recorded by Le CFO masqué and to save a copy of the existing content. If there ever was a major problem on the live website, we could recover the lost information from this temporary testing environment. It was only once the staging platform was finalized that we began to implement solutions to improve the user experience.
New custom features were created. Before starting the development process, we analyzed all the WordPress extensions previously installed to ensure that they were compatible with one another. Once the plugins were all functional, we customized several of them, including WooCommerce and LearnDash.
Integrating WordPress CMS with Mailchimp, Facebook and LinkedIn
Unik Web linked the WordPress interface with the Mailchimp marketing service platform n order to facilitate the promotion of different content and products to subscribers. This allowed Le CFO masqué to better target its customers. The company was able to segment its contact lists and send only the relevant marketing content to the right audiences.
We also connected the WordPress CMS to the various social media platforms, including LinkedIn and Facebook. By doing so, customers could now share content with their network and publish their professional accomplishments. This integration allowed, among other things, to increase the visibility of the site within a very niche clientele.
+ 13,000
active users on the LMS
supported by the website
An SEO Analysis for a Better Performance Through Content Optimization
Le CFO masqué’s website hosts a considerable amount of content. It contains over 1000 blog articles explaining various topics to a very targeted audience. We had to ensure that this content, rich in valuable information, performed well in order to generate organic traffic. We therefore carried out a complete analysis of the site, performed a keyword search and developed a strategy to optimize existing content. To get an overall picture of the site’s performance in its industry, Unik Web also did a complete analysis of Le CFO masqué’s main competitors. Then, in order to increase the authority of the site, the team put together a link building strategy. Finally, we produced monthly reports that measured the results of the various SEO improvements made. This allowed us to modify or better elaborate, if necessary, the strategies put in place according to the main goals.
Technologies Used
- 85%
decrease of the site’s average response time
Client Testimonial
The personalized functionalities developed by Unik Web allowed us to offer a complete service fully adapted to the needs of our customers. We spend a lot less time managing our WordPress site and we can now focus on the aspects of our job that we love the most: creating educational content and training our clients so they can become Excel and Power BI experts.
Kim Leblanc
Excel et Power BI Expert
Le CFO masqué
