Case Study 2: Rescuing a B2C Shop – Integrity Meets High Performance
Ein etablierter B2C-Händler mit jeweils über 300.000 Kunden und Bestellungen, der trotz der Zusammenarbeit mit mehreren Agenturen an massiven Performance-Einbußen und einer Conversion-Rate von unter 1 % litt.
The Challenge: Loss of Trust and Technical Chaos
The customer commissioned us for a three-day audit. The starting point was critical: the shop ran on a bloated infrastructure of 8 servers, but achieved only a PageSpeed score below 50 and suffered from a conversion rate far below 1%. The customer was understandably distrustful because previous agencies had failed with the historically grown shop and the customer’s feature requirements.
Our Solution: Fairness Instead of Profit Maximization
- Already after the first day of analysis, we had documented more than four DIN A4 pages of critical errors.
- Proactive Termination: In the customer’s interest, we stopped the paid consulting at this point. From our perspective, it would not have been fair to bill further consulting days once the shop’s foundation had already been identified as “in need of remediation.”
- The “Zero-Risk” Offer: To restore trust in Shopware agencies we offered a free test migration. We used only the two remaining days of the original budget for initial technical optimizations on a development system hosted by us.
- Maximum Customer Satisfaction: The customer was more than satisfied with the result and commissioned the final live migration.
The Technical Transformation:
- Infrastructure Tuning: Migration to a specialized Shopware server bei uns mit präziser MySQL-Konfiguration, die exakt auf die großen Datenmengen (> tailored to 300k customers).
- Technology Stack: Implementation of Redis (caching) and Elasticsearch (search), as well as radical cleanup of extensions not developed according to Shopware specifications and additional “dead code.”
- Varnish Turbo: After the successful test, we placed a Varnish caching server in front of the system to achieve lightning-fast loading times.
The Result: From Below 50 to Above 80 Points
- Performance Explosion: During the project period (03/2023–04/2023), the PageSpeed score in the mobile lab measurement rose from <50 to above 80 (even though the customer was still using an old Shopware 5 shop), and the entire user journey (especially cart and checkout) improved noticeably – checkout times were reduced by 70%.
- Efficiency Win: We replaced the unstable 8-server setup with a lean, high-performance environment consisting of 2 servers.
Our Strategy for Technical Remediation:
- Identification of Performance Drains: In a detailed code audit, we identified inefficient extensions that negatively affected loading times and unnecessarily burdened the database.
- Custom Plugin Development: We replaced these critical third-party plugins with tailor-made, high-performance custom developments. These are precisely tailored to the customer’s needs, avoid unnecessary overhead and are always developed by us with optimal performance in mind.
- System Cleanup: By consistently removing “dead code” and replacing inefficient logic, the Shopware system became not only faster but also easier to maintain and more stable for future updates.
- Security Bonus: As part of the audit, we also identified older – fortunately no longer functioning – code that would have stored personal data outside the EU without customers’ prior consent within the meaning of the GDPR.
Measurable Success: ROI Optimization and Massive Cost Reduction
- A highly optimized Shopware shop that maintains peak performance even with complex functionality. By using our custom-developed plugins, we were able to reduce server load further and sustainably professionalize the user experience.
- Instead of isolated solutions, the customer received a synergistic task force that successfully combined technology and marketing into a high-return unit, as the companies have known each other for more than 20 years.
- The technical relaunch and continuous support by HQ GmbH produced results that go far beyond a simple performance increase. We proved that technical excellence has a direct impact on a company’s profitability.
Continuous Code Optimization
After the successful migration, the phase of sustainable system maintenance began. A central problem with the original installation was a large number of third-party plugins that proved to be massive performance blockers and unnecessarily bloated the system.
The Hard Facts of the Project’s Success:
- Massive Reduction in Operating Costs: By consolidating the infrastructure and switching to our specialized high-performance hosting at HQ GmbH, the customer now saves around €600 in server costs per month – with significantly higher performance.
- Multiplication of the Conversion Rate: By optimizing the user journey and radically accelerating checkout, the conversion rate increased from an average of 0.4–0.7% to more than 3–4%.
- More Efficient Marketing Budget: Thanks to technical SEO optimization and excellent loading times (PageSpeed), the shop achieves significantly better organic rankings. As a result, paid advertising costs (SEA) were noticeably reduced while revenue remained the same or increased.
Collaboration with Marketing and SEO Specialists
After the migration and initial successes, collaboration began to further increase the customer’s ROI. An online shop is only as strong as the interaction between technology and marketing. In this project, we worked hand in hand with a specialized SEO agency and a specialized marketing agency with whom we have maintained a trusting partnership for more than 20 years. Thanks to the direct communication between IT, marketing and SEO, optimization proposals were not merely discussed but implemented technically right away.
This case is a typical example of complex Shopware takeovers as part of an agency change.
👉 More about: Shopware agency change in detail
Conclusion: The investment in professional analysis and technical remediation paid for itself for the customer within a very short time. Today, the customer operates a highly profitable system built on a stable technological and economic foundation.
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Mathias Goldhan
Mathias Goldhan laid the foundation for today’s digital agency in 1994 and has been leading HQ GmbH strategically and operationally since 2005. With more than three decades of experience in software development and systems architecture, he advises medium-sized businesses and brands on the digitalization of business-critical processes. He is the strategic mind behind HQ GmbH’s positioning among the Top 100 owner-managed digital agencies (iBusiness/BVDW).
As a recognized SaaS pioneer and specialist in high-performance hosting, he designs highly available cluster infrastructures and leads the technical rescue of stalled large-scale e-commerce projects. He contributes his expertise in resilient systems and API-based B2B automation internationally between the company’s headquarters in Thuringia and its branch in Spain.
