The Challenge
Purl Soho’s website was crashing daily, despite running standard platforms on a very large Rackspace hosting infrastructure. This beloved resource for needle-crafters, founded by three Martha Stewart alumni, has served as a hub for thousands of knitters, crocheters, quilters and embroiderers since 2002 – but its site was losing more community members with every minute of downtime.
Sourcetop’s Solution
We performed a top-to-bottom audit of Purl Soho’s WordPress blog and Magento store, and determined that the site had been over-customized to the point of instability and incoherence. Over a two-month period, we removed and replaced the rouge code piece-by-piece, methodically stabilizing the site one component at a time – a task similar to changing a flat tire while the car is moving.
The Results
The site is now fully stabilized, and continues to serve as a community hub for needle-workers around the world. Since the initial overhaul, we've remained Purl Soho’s ongoing technology partner, improving everything from inventory management, search engine optimization (SEO and social integration to in-store point-of-sale (POS) systems, server monitoring and digital marketing.
Purl Soho’s site was recently selected by Google to be featured in an AdWords case study. This publicity, coupled with a month-long ad campaign, has driven major new waves of traffic to the site, which has continues to perform without a single hiccup. As a result, sales have increased, user engagement has risen, and Purl Soho is free to focus on building their business.