Building websites is becoming increasingly difficult as the shortest amount of downtime or page loading delays will cause customers to go elsewhere. We recently caught up with WP Engine customer and website building guru, Jon Martin, Technical Director and Co-Founder of BigSpring, to learn more about his business and its work with WP Engine.
Hi Jon, thanks for taking the time out to talk to us today. Can you start with a quick introduction to yourself and your company?
Hi, I’m the Technical Director of BigSpring, a web-based agency in Nottingham, United Kingdom that builds websites and apps for global brands, start-ups, and everything in between. I co-founded the company seven years ago and typically look after the back-end, reporting, and server side of the business.
For us, a successful website is not just about design or aesthetics, it solves a problem. It should lead to more conversions, faster performance and a streamlined user experience (UX).
A great UX should be at the heart of all great websites and one of the main components of this is a fast server so that users do not have to wait too long for pages to load. The stats demonstrate that longer page loading times lead to a high bounce rate and lost conversions, which would detrimental to our business.
Can you tell us about your journey with us here at WP Engine?
When we first started, we worked with a variety of content management systems (CMS). At the time, WordPress was just seen as a platform for bloggers and not right for our purposes. As soon as WordPress 3.0 was launched, that changed! The platform gave us everything we needed, so we made the choice to work exclusively with WordPress.
The relationship with WP Engine started when the hosting for one of our clients wasn’t quite up to scratch. We read loads of great reviews about WP Engine online and wanted to trial it for ourselves. The onboarding was a success and the process was so good that we used this as a test case to justify transferring all of our clients over to WP Engine.
Have we lived up to your expectation?
WP Engine has exceeded expectations due to the speed and support offered. Its website caching enables our clients’ sites to perform at an optimum level while the general and technical support provided by the WP Engine team is invaluable. This saves us time, and for a project-based business like us, that’s vital.
The relationship is continuing to develop. We used to only contact WP Engine when we had problems, we now pick up the phone when we have an upcoming tough project to get their advice.
It’s also good to work with a partner that specialises in WordPress and knows it inside out. WP Engine understands the architecture, how to build a WordPress site, and constantly checks how each one is performing, which is rare.
Would you recommend us to others?
Definitely, we’re such advocates for WP Engine that we even refer our own customers to them, which has helped us improve our own client relationships. One of the first customers we referred to WP Engine immediately bumped up its SEO rankings due to its increased speed. This is just one of many examples that demonstrates that if you work with WordPress, you should work with WP Engine.
Want to read more stories from WP Engine customers? Each weekday in November we’ll unveil a new customer story as part of our WP Engine Customer Spotlight series.
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