How DrawPillows fixed a 45-second checkout in 3 days, right before its Good Morning America launch
DrawPillows, a DTC brand that turns kids' drawings into custom-made pillows.
45s → <2s
checkout load time, even with multiple images
3 days
to fix it before a Good Morning America launch
1
embedded engineer, plus performance consulting
The challenge
On the Thursday before Thanksgiving, DrawPillows came to us with a problem and a deadline. That Monday they were launching on Good Morning America, and their checkout couldn't handle it. Uploading a photo and adding it to the cart took over 45 seconds, and longer if a customer added more than one drawing. A national TV segment was about to point a wave of traffic at a checkout that was barely working. We had three days.
The results
By Monday, uploading artwork and adding it to the cart took under two seconds instead of 45, even with several images. The checkout was fixed and live before the Good Morning America segment aired, so instead of losing customers during the biggest traffic moment of their year, DrawPillows went into the launch with a checkout that held up.
What we did
We embedded an engineer to take on the UI work and provided hands-on performance consulting to fix the checkout from end to end. We tracked down what was making the photo upload and add-to-cart so slow, reworked the flow, and tightened up the rest of the checkout along the way.
- •Rebuilt the photo upload so adding artwork was fast, even with several images
- •Cut the 45-second add-to-cart wait to under two seconds, even with multiple images uploaded
- •Hardened the checkout so it could take the traffic from a national TV spot
- •Shipped it all, tested and deployed, before Monday morning