The Brief - Improving Performance & Responsive Design

The brief was to improve performance and mobile usability to two Umbraco websites for the NZ Multihull Yacht Club. The performance improvements were in relation to the Coastal Classic, a high profile yacht race, and both websites needed to be made more usable on mobile.

The Coastal Classic website manages registrations, entries, and race tracking during the race - one weekend where the website is very heavily used. The site had fallen over during the race the previous year and there were bugs which made it difficult for users to register. 

What we did

We reviewed the site, finding that the fundamental data structure was not designed for the type of performance required. Rebuilding the structure was not an option, so we worked around it, restructuring some of the queries, caching, and testing with performance measurement tools until we were sure that it would cope with thousands of visitors per hour on the day. To to give us complete control in the event of something unexpected on the weekend, we moved the site onto our own servers.

We simplified the templates for both sites, making them responsive where possible, and combined the two sites into one to reduce hosting fees and make updates easier.

Results

The changes were complete in time, the race went well, and the website performed well throughout.

View Website

We came to Phosphor pretty much in a state of frustration and distrust. We are a small yacht club with a high profile race that is media hungry. A slick web site is a must. We had upgraded our web site only a year before and it had been a disaster. On race day it fell over as the servers could not cope and trying to view it on a mobile or tablet was impossible.

I contacted a few companies to help us out and Phosphor was the only one that gave me the confidence that they had the technical savvy to sort our issues out. We had a technical review of the site done and this enabled us to spend our budget wisely. This also gave us confidence that they knew what they were doing.

The CMS was upgraded, performance and mobile platform issues addressed and this year the site was slick and fast. 

Phosphor were excellent, they had the know-how and experience to fix the existing bugs quickly and effectively while adding enhancements and upgrades.

I would recommend them highly.

Clive Wright, Race Committee, Coastal Classic ,,