A slow store starts hitting the numbers it should

The Challenge

Traffic arrived, but the site was too slow to convert it

All Backyard Fun is an online retailer of fire pits, outdoor furniture and backyard products, selling in a market where shoppers compare and leave quickly.

Speed scores were low and sales were below what the marketing spend should have produced. The causes were spread across the checkout, the search tool, hosting, page images and the catalog itself — no single vendor owned the problem.

The team running the store is a marketing team, without in-house technical staff to arbitrate between those suppliers.

The Strategy

Measure first, then push each vendor on their own part

PeakBeyond started with diagnostics rather than opinions, isolating how much came from checkout overhead, how much from heavy homepage assets and how much from catalog and image handling.

With evidence in hand, each vendor could be held to their own contribution — the checkout provider, the search tool, the host and the acceleration service — instead of pointing at one another.

Alongside it we gave the marketing team technical direction for everyday work, so routine changes stopped adding weight back to the site.

The Solution

A speed program run across four vendors

PeakBeyond acted as the technical voice for a team that didn't have one, running a speed program across four vendors.

• Measured before arguing — Performance diagnostics across checkout, search, hosting and page assets, to attribute the slowdowns rather than guess at them.
• Held each vendor to their own part — Worked the checkout and search vendors down on their overhead, and reduced asset weight and improved image and lazy loading with the host and acceleration service.
• Took the manual work out of the catalog — Bulk image and product imports, with advice on page templates and custom options and direction on extension installs.
• Made changes safe — Tracked the priority fixes from staging through to production instead of gambling on the live store.

Evidence, not opinion, decided who fixed what — and as speed improved, the client reported the site finally hitting the sales numbers it should.

The Results

Faster pages, and the sales that were supposed to follow

As speed improved, the client reported the site finally hitting the sales numbers it should — the clearest evidence that the slowdowns, not demand, had been the constraint.

Bulk imports and template guidance let the marketing team run the catalog without adding weight back to the pages.

With fixes tracked from staging to production, changes stopped being a gamble on the live store.

The marketing spend finally reached a site that could convert it.