LUXY™, a premium booking platform for ground transportation, recently launched a redesigned Next.js-based website powered by Strapi Headless CMS. However, after launch, organic traffic declined, raising concerns about technical misconfigurations that led to lower rankings and a poor user experience.
LUXY™ suspected that some aspects of their Strapi setup, content delivery, or NextJS implementation might be incorrectly implemented, but lacked the in-house expertise to diagnose the issue effectively. To resolve these challenges, they sought an expert-led usability, technology, and SEO audit from VirtusLab, a recognized authority in the Strapi ecosystem.
VirtusLab’s audit uncovered key factors contributing to the traffic decline and provided actionable recommendations, helping LUXY™ restore and enhance its online visibility and user engagement.
The Challenge
LUXY™ introduced several major updates to its website with specific goals in mind.
- A complete rebrand, redefining the look and feel and optimizing user journeys to improve conversion rates.
- NextJS Isomorphic Rendering, leveraging Server-Side Rendering (SSR) and Client-Side Rendering (CSR) for a modern, interactive experience.
- Strapi Headless CMS, to use its flexibility and content management capabilities.
Despite these enhancements, the platform saw a decline in organic traffic shortly after launch. As organic traffic was an essential revenue driver, LUXY™ needed to determine whether the issue stemmed from SEO misalignment, user experience challenges, or technical limitations in their implementation.
While the in-house team suspected potential misconfigurations, they lacked specialized expertise in Strapi, NextJS, and SEO best practices to pinpoint and resolve the problem. Seeking an independent, expert-driven assessment, LUXY™ engaged VirtusLab for a deep audit.
The Solution
VirtusLab conducted a comprehensive usability, technology, and SEO audit, assessing multiple aspects of LUXY™’s platform:
- Accessibility Audit
- Performed WCAG compliance tests on key website components to identify areas where accessibility gaps could impact user engagement and traffic.
- User Experience (UX) Analysis
- Evaluated the impact of the redesigned user journeys on engagement and conversion.
- Provided behavioral insights and recommendations to enhance usability and improve retention.
- Information Architecture Review
- Assessed content structure, layout, and navigation, ensuring alignment with SEO best practices.
- Identified areas where first-impression impact and user clarity could be improved.
- Strapi Headless CMS Configuration
- Analyzed the setup, data schema complexity, and performance of the CMS.
- Verified whether content delivery was optimized for SEO and efficient daily operations for the marketing team.
- NextJS Implementation Audit
- Examined how SSR and CSR were used, ensuring that search engines could properly index content.
- Reviewed rendering techniques to optimize performance and engagement.
- SEO Evaluation
- Conducted a technical SEO review, using industry-standard tools to assess search engine visibility and optimization effectiveness.
- Identified on-page factors that impacted search rankings.
“VirtusLab was one of the Strapi Partners we considered asking for a deep audit of our new website, as we presumed that some misconfiguration or how we’re consuming the data might cause the issues we were facing. Their team proved the top expertise in the area, not only in Strapi but also in User Experience, NextJS, and SEO, by performing a deep and comprehensive audit of our solution. They identified the root causes of the organic traffic drop and proposed a set of solutions for our engineering team to implement. The outcome was far more detailed and touched a wider scope than even expected. Definitely would like to work with the VirtusLab team again and use their expertise.”
Eric Redding
The Results
With VirtusLab’s expertise, LUXY™ received a detailed audit report with actionable insights, helping them address key issues affecting traffic and visibility. The audit:
- Identified multiple areas contributing to the traffic decline, including SEO inefficiencies, user experience challenges, and technical considerations.
- Guided LUXY™’s engineering team on corrective actions, providing a roadmap to restore traffic and optimize performance.
- Advised on SEO best practices, ensuring long-term search visibility and improved ranking potential.
- Provided recommendations to make Strapi more efficient for daily content management.
Outlined strategies for ongoing maintenance, helping LUXY™ sustain performance and search visibility improvements.