The Broke Backpacker achieves healthy core web vitals

StrategiQ rebuilt The Broke Backpacker’s aging theme from scratch, delivering industry-leading performance.

  • 1.87s

    average load time

  • 3X

    reduction in active plugins

The Broke Backpacker home page screen shot

Client ProfileA growing travel blog outgrows its codebase

A person in a red jacket stands on a cliff, overlooking a lake winding through a valley surrounded by steep, rugged mountains.
Client Site
thebrokebackpacker.com (opens in a new tab)
Products

The Broke Backpacker, a widely-read travel blog,  reaches more than 9 million unique readers a year, helps adventurers learn how to explore the world without breaking their bank account. 

Agency ProfileThe strategy-first marketing agency

StrategiQ, a UK-based WP Engine Agency Partner, rebuilt the theme from scratch, introduced Gutenberg for easier publishing, and migrated roughly 3,000 pages while preserving SEO structure.

By uncovering valuable market insights, revealing competitor beating opportunities, defining and delivering effective marketing strategies, Strategiq help ambitious brands outperform their objectives through advisory, creative, marketing and tech.

Agency Site
strategiqmarketing.co.uk (opens in a new tab)
Agency Partner
Strategic Partner

  • The ChallengeA cluttered site

    During the pandemic travel pause, the development team behind The Broke Backpacker set out to overhaul its WordPress site ahead of Google’s Core Web Vitals update. Years of work by different developers had left the site with a “Frankenstein” codebase. 

    Agency partner StrategiQ discovered more than two dozen obsolete plugins and scripts weighing down the site. The weight of these unnecessary elements slowed the site, made updates more complicated, and created additional security risks. Additionally, the site needed to be accessible to content contributors.

  • The SolutionA ground-up rebuild

    StrategiQ built a custom, lightweight WordPress theme from scratch on WP Engine, adopting Gutenberg for simpler publishing and migrating roughly 3,000 pages of existing content while preserving the site’s SEO structure.

ResultsPerformance gains across every metric

 Mobile PageSpeed Insights scores climbed from 31 to 90, while desktop scores surged to 99. Across Lighthouse score audits, performance soared to 99 on mobile and a perfect 100 on desktop. All while slashing the site’s plugin count from 72 to 23—a 3x reduction that eased the burden on future developers and cut page load times from nearly 12 seconds down to just 1.87.

  • 90

    mobile PageSpeed score, up from 31

  • 100

    desktop Lighthouse score, up from 28

We were able to leverage the early pandemic down-time to relaunch a website that enhances the user experience for both the users and the editors of the platform.

Phil McEwan Marketing Director, StrategiQ

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