In this article, you will learn how we have improved the performance of the website of the environmental action “Earth Hour”.
You have probably heard about the environmental action “Earth Hour”.
So, we are Sailet, and we were able to participate in the organization of this event in 2021.
Who are we?
Sailet is a business automation, web, and mobile development studio.
We are engaged in web development, application development, and business process automation.
We create corporate and national portals, SAAS services, web systems with various integrations, and mobile applications for Android and IOS systems.
About the project
Probably everyone has heard about this action, but not everyone knows that it is not aimed at saving electricity. It is a symbolic public action through which every year more people learn about the problem of the depletion of natural resources. For the first time, the world has massively extinguished the light in 2009 and since 2011 the campaign has been attended by about 2 billion people annually.
The organizer and our client were World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
In 2021, Earth Hour was held online for the second year in a row. Participants could “turn off the lights” in stories on social networks, as well as on the website.
The organizer and our client were the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
We were in charge of the website, so we had a huge responsibility.
The campaign theme was “Open!” and focused on opening up environmental information.
Project work
Every year the action becomes more and more popular. A big audience was expected. The customer wanted us to create a site on the old engine.
In the previous year, the site for the first time withstood the load. But the earlier version was hard to manage and had many problems.
There were problems with the loading speed, the map slowed down (as a result, it was loaded only from the moment of the active screen)
some automatic synchronization processes periodically “fell off” and there was nothing on the website except planted into the content layout.
Working process:
- Deploy the old site;
- Drag to the new servers;
- Update admin panel;
- Roll up the front.
In general, it seemed easy.
But the problem is that the website is highly loaded. That is why the architecture looked like this:
Admin panel on Bitrix;
API on Kohan;
All of these messages through RabbitMQ;
Updating the map and content by running scripts through the CRON task scheduler.
Minimum documentation. just take an educated guess. Drag and drop. Rolled up the front on React.
Spoiler: this year we are completely redesigning the site in October CMS.
We made mini bonuses!
Improved performance.
Created three separate blocks (About Earth Hour, How to Participate, Partners).
The light bulb and the off button. The switch changes when you point, and the “light bulb” goes out. When you click it, a window displays where you can register a participant.
The countdown timer is started before the start of the action. At the moment of the start of the action, the inscription “turn off the light through …” was changed to “turn off the light” and the countdown began from 60 to 0 minutes. A week after the promotion, the counter is updated for the next year.
All this time there is a video on the site, which is replaced with a live broadcast during the promotion period.
The counter “With us … a person” is updated by the number of leads. You can take the test “Find out your eco-purpose”. After — you can compare your result with the results of the stars.
As a result, everything was divided into three servers: front, spare front + API, and admin panel on Bitrix.
Better safe than sorry.
We lightened the load on the servers as much as possible and, at the same time, retained all the functionality of the previous year. During the peak load period, additional capacities were allocated. The site is three months old. During the campaign, the site received a little more than 410,000 visitors and worked without interruption.
But, the main flow was on the day of the promotion. Above 81,000. At that moment there were 25 to 30 requests per second.
As a result
A big thank you to Sailet Studio for preparing the “Earth Hour” 2021 website. The team put an effort together with a fast and stable website with community design.
Mikhail Volkov
Head of digital projects at WWF Russia
To sum it up, the heavy load did not interfere with the former stable operation of the site. And he did not even “flutter” at the very peak. The conversion of the site is more than 20%. The customer was pleased with our work and extended our cooperation. Now we are engaged in the site for 2022.
P.S. Sailet is partnering with DesignRush and is recognized as one of the best providers for website redesign services.