Michigan Enjoyer

Michigan Enjoyer had a problem. Two years after launch, their website was bogged down with errors, slow performance, constant malware attacks and exorbitant server costs. Running on a WordPress backend, built with Elementor, the site traffic had grown far past its infrastructure.

We analyzed the current site structure and developed a comprehensive plan for a full content migration and rebuild. We kept the strongest elements of the brand, while building an entirely new site design and infrastructure from the ground up.

We structured the new site as a state of the art Next.js site, hosted on Vercel with a custom Sanity CMS backend. The custom backend allowed for new site features like header image YouTube video embeds, and an integrated LLM for generating image alt text. All existing 1,067 articles were migrated seamlessly.

We also redesigned the site UX from the ground up, including dynamic article preview cards, scrolling marquees, a random article "Surprise Me" feature, and an interactive map of articles across Michigan.

Further investigation revealed that Enjoyer's current email service provider was hot-linking site images directly to their daily newsletters, also spiking server costs. We recommended a switch to a new provider, Beehiiv, and wired up the new integrations to the site.

Site performance increased 238%, from an initial 29 Lighthouse performance score to a stellar 98. Page load times decreased 22x, with 4.2x smaller page sizes and 6.1x less JS execution.

7 additional, previously nonexistent security headers were added, and the headless site structure made the new site impervious to malware attacks.

Site costs decreased by 90%, with dramatically lower costs due to Vercel's edge network. Switching ESPs dramatically decreased server load as well.

With a structured retainer deal, site maintenance, additions and changes moved in-house. What used to take weeks to change, now happens immediately.