Benchmark the existing site
We used Google Lighthouse to measure the current website on mobile and desktop, with mobile treated as the priority because most visitors browse on phones and Google uses mobile performance as a ranking signal.
Case study
Zellow CBD: Speed and performance gains
How we improved a slow Elementor, WooCommerce and WordPress site by moving it to Atomic Horse managed WordPress hosting and giving performance the attention it needed.
Why it matters
Better performance means a better shop for customers.
This project shows the kind of practical work that helps a slow WordPress site become faster, easier to trust and better prepared for growth, without asking the client to pay for a rebuild before it is needed.
Challenge
What needed solving
Zellow CBD came to us with a slow Elementor, WooCommerce and WordPress website. The site relied on a page builder and a large plugin stack, so the brief was not to rebuild everything from scratch. The job was to understand what was slowing the site down, move it onto Atomic Horse managed WordPress hosting, and make practical performance gains without disrupting how the client managed the store.
Approach
What we did
Work with the existing build
Elementor and WooCommerce were treated as fixed constraints for the first phase. Rather than pushing for an unnecessary rebuild, we focused on the improvements that could be made around the existing WordPress setup.
Improve the hosting foundation
The site was moved to Atomic Horse managed WordPress hosting and reviewed with performance in mind, reducing the drag caused by the previous hosting environment and giving the store a more stable base.
Test before recommending more work
After optimisation, we compared the improved site against the original Lighthouse findings and checked for follow-up issues such as broken images, giving the client a clear view of what had changed and what could be tackled next.
Deliverables
What the client received
- Lighthouse report
- Optimised hosting
- WooCommerce tuning
- Migration testing
Lighthouse
Performance scores
Before
Mobile
Current live site- 48Performance
- 88Accessibility
- 96Best practices
- 85SEO
Before
Desktop
Current live site- 74Performance
- 88Accessibility
- 96Best practices
- 85SEO
After
Mobile
Atomic Horse hosting- 86Performance
- 87Accessibility
- 96Best practices
- 50SEO
After
Desktop
Atomic Horse hosting- 98Performance
- 87Accessibility
- 96Best practices
- 50SEO
SEO scores on the test site were deliberately affected because Google crawlers were blocked while the work was being tested.
Client review
Great service all round, would highly recommend!
Outcome
What changed
Substantial speed gains
The report showed strong performance improvements after the move to Atomic Horse managed WordPress hosting, proving that a slow page-builder site can still benefit from careful hosting and optimisation work.
No full rebuild required
The gains were strong enough that we did not recommend rebuilding the site as a block theme at this stage, keeping the project focused and cost-effective.
A clearer performance roadmap
The client received a plain-English report explaining the benchmark, the improvements, the limits of the current build, and the sensible next steps for further tuning.
Zellow CBD needed a faster e-commerce site, but the answer was not automatically a full rebuild. Their store was running on WordPress with WooCommerce and Elementor, a common combination that gives clients a lot of editing control but can become heavy if the hosting, plugins and front-end assets are not kept in check.
We started with a Lighthouse report so the conversation was based on evidence rather than guesswork. Lighthouse gave us top-level scores for the site and highlighted the areas that most affected the customer experience: how fast the site loaded, how usable it felt on mobile, and where technical improvements would make the biggest difference.
For this phase, accessibility and SEO were kept outside the scope of the work. The test site also had crawler access blocked, which affected SEO reporting but prevented it from being accidentally indexed by Google while we were working.
The main decision was to treat Elementor as a constraint, not a blocker. A custom WordPress build or block-based theme would usually give more control over performance, but it would also have changed the scope of the project. The immediate opportunity was to move the site onto Atomic Horse managed WordPress hosting and optimise what was already there.
That proved to be the right first step. Running the site on our WordPress hosting and support setup and giving performance some focused attention delivered clear gains, without forcing the client into a larger rebuild before it was needed. There is still room for further tuning, but the initial work gave Zellow CBD a faster, more reliable store and a better technical foundation for future improvements.