The Client and Starting Point

The owner of an online store selling construction materials in Odesa reached out to us. The store had been operating for 2 years, carried around 1,200 SKUs, and had its own warehouse. The problem was clear: maintenance costs exceeded revenue from online sales. The client was considering shutting down the online channel entirely.

Starting Metrics (October 2025)

  • Organic traffic: 800 visitors/month

  • Order conversion rate: 0.8%

  • Average order value: UAH 2,400

  • Monthly online revenue: ~UAH 15,000

  • Bounce rate: 74%

  • Average load time: 8.4 seconds (mobile)

  • PageSpeed Score mobile: 23/100

Diagnosis: What We Found During the Audit

Before proposing solutions — we ran a full audit: technical SEO, UX, analytics, and ad campaigns. The picture was bleak:

  • Technical issues: site on OpenCart 2.3 with no updates for 3 years, unoptimized images (average size 1.8 MB), no WebP, no caching

  • SEO: 89% of pages without title or description, duplicate content from catalog filters, missing sitemap, robots.txt blocking most of the catalog

  • UX/conversion: 7-step checkout, no social proof (reviews), unclear shipping cost, no "add to cart" on product cards

  • Ads: Google Ads campaign with 1.2% CTR, no conversion tracking, manual bidding with no data

Our Approach: Four Parallel Tracks

Track 1. Speed and Technical Optimization (October–November)

Technical issues are the foundation. Without fixing them, any advertising or SEO is a waste of money.

  • Upgraded to PHP 8.2 and OpenCart 3.0.x

  • Converted all images to WebP, compressed without quality loss

  • Configured Redis caching for category and product pages

  • Connected CDN (Cloudflare) for static assets

  • Critical CSS inline, deferred JS loading

  • Result: PageSpeed Mobile 23 → 78, load time 8.4 → 2.1 seconds

Track 2. SEO Optimization (October–February)

SEO is a marathon, but a proper start delivers first results within 6–8 weeks.

  • Generated unique titles and descriptions for 1,200 products via templates

  • Fixed robots.txt and updated sitemap.xml

  • Set up canonical tags for filters and pagination

  • Wrote SEO copy for 18 catalog categories

  • Added Schema.org Product markup to all product pages

  • Local SEO: Google Business Profile, 2GIS, Prom.ua

  • Result: +380% organic traffic in 4 months

Track 3. Key Page Redesign (November)

We did not do a full redesign — only pages with the greatest conversion impact.

  • Product page: large photos, "Add to Cart" above the fold, reviews, related products block

  • Checkout: reduced from 7 to 3 steps (email → shipping → payment)

  • Homepage: hero with current promotions, benefits block, popular categories

  • Shipping cost: calculator directly on the product page

  • Added 47 real customer reviews (collected via email campaign)

Track 4. Google Ads (November–February)

After the technical fix, we launched ads with proper conversion tracking.

  • Conversion tracking via GA4 + Google Ads conversion import

  • Search campaigns across 120 keywords (branded + category + competitor)

  • Google Shopping: feed with live prices and availability

  • RLSA remarketing to cart abandoners

  • Budget: UAH 15,000/month → ROAS 420%

Results After 4 Months (February 2026)

  • Organic traffic: 800 → 4,200 visitors/month (+425%)

  • Conversion rate: 0.8% → 3.1% (+288%)

  • Average order value: UAH 2,400 → UAH 2,850 (+19%)

  • Monthly online revenue: UAH 15,000 → UAH 67,000 (+350%)

  • Bounce rate: 74% → 41%

  • PageSpeed Mobile: 23 → 78

  • Google rankings: 34 queries in the top 10 (up from 2 at the start)

Client Testimonial

"I was already thinking of shutting down the online channel — it just was not paying off. In 4 months of working with IT Master the store became profitable. Now online brings in more than the physical outlet. What impressed me most was that results came in the very first month after the technical fix — the site simply started loading properly and people stopped leaving."

— Oleksiy V., owner of a construction materials store, Odesa

Lessons and Takeaways

  • Speed first: 90% of the first-month conversion growth came from the technical fix alone, with zero ad spend

  • Data before ads: launching Google Ads without conversion tracking is flying blind

  • Reviews convert: 47 reviews raised conversion on product pages by 0.6 percentage points

  • Parallelism matters: SEO delivers results in 2–3 months, ads deliver immediately — together they are synergistic

Want similar results for your online store? Order a free audit from IT Master — we will identify specific growth opportunities at the very first meeting.