Bringing a neglected online shop back to strong sales

TMKEd sells educational worksheets online. The site had not been maintained for several years, and the accumulated technical debt had reached a tipping point. Some pages took so long to load they timed out completely. The database was bloated with legacy data from plugins that had since been removed or replaced. Unnecessary plugins remained installed, each adding overhead.

Bounce rate was climbing and sales slipping, a problem when free alternatives exist everywhere and customers will not tolerate slowness. The site needed to work harder to convert visitors who had already made the decision to pay for quality content.

Rather than rebuilding from scratch, the approach was to strip the site back to essentials first. I audited the plugins to find what mattered and what was just weight. Unnecessary plugins were removed. Custom scripts were written to clean legacy data from the live database, removing orphaned records from plugins that no longer existed.

With a lean foundation established, a new theme was built around it. The design focused on what actually sells: clear benefits, logical layout, and making purchase easy. New content blocks were introduced to reflect these principles. All remaining plugins were updated and configured correctly.

Page load times dropped from timeouts to under one second. Lighthouse scores increased from 50-60 to over 90. Sales increased 24% in the first few weeks after launch. The site now has a maintainable codebase and a clear path for future expansion.