The Client
Founded in 1978, the California Avocado Commission strives to enhance the premium positioning of California Avocados through advertising, promotion, public relations and related industry activities. California Avocados are commercially cultivated with an uncompromising dedication to quality and freshness, by more than 3,000 growers in the Golden State. The California Avocado Commission serves as the official information source for the California Avocado industry with (www.californiaavocado.com) being their official website.
Project Scope
The California Avocado Commission's website, built on the Kentico platform, was plagued with issues. They required a new Kentico Gold Partner to help fix these problems and handle ongoing maintenance, support, and development. Additionally, a major redesign was also on the horizon, requiring seamless collaboration with their creative agency Mullen Lowe. Main goals included:
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- Premium Platform: Ensure the website reflects the premium positioning of California Avocados.
- Global Reach: Support the Commission's global marketing and communications efforts.
- Website Stability: Implement fixes for all identified issues in the i3 Digital Audit/Health Check to create a stable and reliable foundation for future growth.
- CMS Optimisation: Eradicate all issues with the core CMS installation.
The Solution
We began by enhancing the core platform, focusing on site performance, security, and reliability. Our certified Kentico developers implemented full-site HTTPS, rectified redirects, integrated social sharing for blog posts, added newsletter sign-up, and transformed the website into a web app for improved Azure cloud performance.
We then developed a dynamic, CMS-configurable Store & Restaurant locator, enabling users to find California Avocados and access a seasonal calendar. Following this, we streamlined the California Avocados Recipe Section, simplifying recipe uploads and efficiently hosting over 1500 recipes.
Highlights
- Avocado 101 & Nutrition Sections: Collaborated with MullenLowe to build these sections from scratch, offering maximum flexibility with a variety of custom widgets for new page templates.
- SEO and Performance Enhancements: Addressed issues from old templates, optimizing site database queries to only load necessary columns, boosting page speed.
- Asset Optimisation: Conducted batch optimisation of website assets (images, media, etc.) ensuring quality was maintained.
- Hosting and Support Transition: i3 Digital’s Facilities and Hosting team took over website hosting and support, implementing a 24/7/365 support contract.
- Azure Cloud Hosting Setup: Established a high-availability, scalable hosting environment on the Azure Cloud.
- CloudFlare CDN Deployment: Enhanced site performance and security by deploying CloudFlare CDN for faster content delivery.
The Result
The California Avocado Commission's website has been transformed into a high-performance, consumer-friendly platform thanks to our team's efforts. We've achieved remarkable milestones:
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- GTmetrix Score Leap: Improved from a lower score to an impressive B (81%).
- Speed Surge: The website now loads 55% faster.
- Lightning-Fast Load Time: Cut down from 3.6 seconds to just 1.8 seconds, beating Google's recommended 2-second threshold.
- Slimmer Page Size: Reduced from 4.4MB to a sleek 2.43MB.
- Bounce Rate Plunge: A staggering 50% decrease in visitor bounce rates.
- Increased Engagement: Visitors are staying 36% longer, indicating deeper engagement with the site.
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55%
Increase in load speeds
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30%
Increase in returning visitors
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36%
Increase in page consumption
"You might be asking why a California ad agency with a California client is working with a digital agency in Belfast. The answer is we had to look far before we found the Kentico expertise we were looking for. We found it in i3 Digital. And not only did they bring expertise, they also brought a truly first-class PM team that every day makes us forget that our offices are more than 5,000 miles apart."
Martin Pagh Ludvigsen - VP, Director of Creative Technology, Mullen Lowe
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