MUD Studio Italia: Core Web Vitals

MUD Studio Italia, a leading company in the beauty industry and training courses for aspiring makeup artists, had a complex and heavy WordPress website, including a blog with a constant need for updates. They turned to us to address the site's speed issues, which, after careful analysis, we identified as stemming from a high load of plugins and suboptimal server configuration, among the primary and more common causes of subpar performance and slow navigation.

The challenge

We proposed to the client a migration strategy to static hosting, which would significantly reduce loading times and improve the overall speed of the site. Static hosting is a very quick solution to solve one of the main performance bottlenecks: the TTFB, The Time to First Byte, a measurement used as an indication of the responsiveness of a web server or other network resource. By generating static HTML pages, this time is greatly reduced: according to Google standards, a good TTFB is when it is less than 800 ms.

The approach

In the case of MUD Studio Italia and the blog structure in particular, we ensured that the migration of the site (and articles) would be quick and painless: we developed a simple and clear process for the migration, which worked smoothly. We were able to plan and then execute the migration itself in the allotted time, minimising any inconveniences. Consulting the HTTP archive data, we learnt that websites using Strattic (one of the available static hosting solutions) perform better than WordPress websites in passing the Core Web Vitals test. With static hosting, the timing of deployment (i.e. providing the environment for a website to run on a hosting platform) became fast and efficient.

The results

Thanks to our optimised infrastructure, we were able to deploy the site quickly: such speed of deployment ensures that the site is always online and does not lose any traffic during the migration process. We tested in particular tools such as HardyPress, which offer a fast and hassle-free static hosting deployment for WordPress sites, while most plugins were supported without any problems during the migration. We also provided the client with a detailed analysis to mitigate any negative impact on site functionality or any discrepancy between the functionality of WordPress and the new hosting.

After the migration to static hosting, MUD Studio Italia's site experienced significant improvements, such as improved user experience and optimised performance for search engines. Page loading times were drastically reduced, providing users with a smooth and lag-free browsing experience, with over half a second more server response time saved, and results from the Core Web Vitals Test significantly improved.