Whola

Name: Whola
Item: Whola
Author: Igor Iakovliev

Optimizing the performance of an Australian marketplace by 5x, improving the page loading speed to <3 seconds, and supporting the Whola Magento website on an ongoing basis

Website

whola.com.au

Industry

Apparel & Fashion

Platform

Magento code audit, performance optimization & ongoing support

Country

Australia

Time Frames

5 Months of work

The backstory

Whola is an Australian B2B apparel & fashion platform that collates some best fast-to-market fashion brands for 2,500+ retailers to access instantly. Alice Fitch, a co-founder of Whola and an expert in fashion wholesale with 10 years experience, had noted all the unnecessary amount of work involved to complete wholesale purchases. This idea drove her to set up a disruptive fashion B2B platform in 2020 that grew into a successful project in only a year.

The mission of the brand is to make buying easier, which was impossible to fulfill without a properly functioning website. When the brand turned to Elogic in mid-November 2020, the website page loading speed varied between a stalling 12 and 20 seconds. The retailer spent fortunes on a server environment that wouldn’t resolve the actual problems causing performance bottlenecks. The website also experienced some invoicing issues and lacked user-friendly functionality.

It was time to act and optimize. And that’s how the Whola & Elogic story began.

Key technologies

We helped the Aussie fashion marketplace increase their website speed and improve usability

The project started in November, and Whola saw noticeable results in the first month. Users no longer had to wait for a webpage to load: we reviewed the code, detected performance bottlenecks, and reduced the webpage loading speed by 5(!) times. Most of the website code and its logic were rewritten, and the Whola website got hosted on AWS cloud to stabilize it and reduce the maintenance costs.

The rest of the project involved developing extra functionality and optimizing web usability. Improved system of search and filtering as well as category trees added to the positive user experience. A suggested welcome page gave a sneak peek into the marketplace variety of brands without giving away the actual catalogs of exclusive ateliers. Custom geographic exclusivity and pre-ordering features allowed customers to make an informed purchasing decision. The brand saw increased customer conversion rates and a boost in company’s sales soon after website optimization.

The collaboration of Whola and Elogic didn’t stop there. We are still adding the finishing touches & integrations to the fashion marketplace. Alice Fitch also loved our services so much that the brand signed up for an ongoing website support:

By demonstrating enthusiasm for it, they secured the engagement. Elogic Commerce improved the website’s speed fivefold and significantly advanced its overall operability. They are available no matter the time of day, which ensures a supportive partnership. Their attentiveness is also appreciated,

— Alice Fitch, a co-founder of the Whola fashion marketplace in Australia.