Case Study KitchenWarehouse.com.au

In the bustling world of online kitchenware retail, KitchenWarehouse.com.au was Australia's number one destination. However, even before the COVID pandemic struck, the company faced a challenge: their aging e-commerce platform was causing performance and scaling issues. Hosted in Seattle, the website's page load times were around 10 seconds, which proved unacceptable for users across Australia.

Luke, the GM of IT Operations & E-Commerce at KitchenWarehouse, knew that they needed to find a solution quickly, or their business would suffer. They tried Cloudflare's CDN service, which brought the page load times down to around 7 seconds. While it was an improvement, it wasn't enough. Then, a referral from an existing Peakhour customer piqued their interest.

Adam from Peakhour came to the rescue. He and his team analyzed KitchenWarehouse's website in detail, identifying caching and optimization opportunities. They revamped the mini cart and account menu functions to utilize Ajax and cookies and integrated Unboxed, a third-party search function, onto the KitchenWarehouse.com.au domain. This provided massive SEO gains, as content previously ignored by Google became indexable. Almost all website content outside of the checkout was now cacheable by the Peakhour service, significantly boosting site speed.

The speed improvements were astonishing, and Luke couldn't be more grateful to Adam and his team. The website's page speed was reduced to around 3 seconds or less, a 70% improvement. Customers were happy, and the search result rankings soared.

When COVID hit in April 2020, KitchenWarehouse experienced an unprecedented spike in traffic. Monthly page views reached around 4 to 4.5 million, and orders increased by about 150% year on year. Yet, despite these challenges, the company's online presence continued to thrive, thanks to Peakhour's solution.

Peakhour's service and support were unparalleled, offering a tailored solution that delivered better performance, custom integration support, and detailed reporting. Their willingness to provide support during critical times, like midnight service cutovers, fostered a sense of partnership.

In addition to speed improvements, Peakhour enhanced KitchenWarehouse's cybersecurity, blocking hacking attempts, BOTs, and DDoS attacks. They also provided greater visibility in this area, aiding in troubleshooting, vulnerability management, and user experience. Peakhour helped block malicious scraping by BOTs, preventing theft of pricing data and reducing platform slowdowns.

Thanks to Peakhour's solution, KitchenWarehouse managed to handle the increased traffic without needing to migrate to a new e-commerce infrastructure. With over 85% of website hits served from the cache, Peakhour reduced server load by nearly 90% and removed over 1.5TB of traffic from the infrastructure. This allowed the IT team to focus on other projects.

Luke Matthews, the GM of IT Operations & E-Commerce at KitchenWarehouse.com.au, couldn't be happier. He said, "We have been amazed and delighted with both the service provided and results delivered by Peakhour, and would recommend them to anyone running an online business."