LA Police Gear Boosts Core Web Vitals with an Overhauled Site

Former police officer Sean Frank has always had a customer-first mentality.

After experiencing first-hand how hard it is to find quality and affordable police gear, he decided to take matters into his own hands. This led him to establish LA Police Gear, which supplies officers with affordable equipment that can withstand any emergency.

Since launching in 2001, LA Police Gear has become the go-to supplier for any gear an officer could need, as well as workwear and outdoor equipment. While the company has evolved since its launch, it’s always stayed true to putting customers at the forefront of its business.

The brand shows this through its world-renowned customer service to its ecommerce site — which offers shoppers an exceptional user journey. In fact, the company recently overhauled its online store to improve its site performance. When assessing its Core Web Vitals, LA Police Gear knew there were areas for improvement.

This overhaul not only optimized the customer experience but also made the site easier for the back-end team to update.

Keep reading to learn how LA Police Gear’s site overhaul significantly improved its Core Web Vitals — enhancing shopper satisfaction and leading to a 14% revenue increase one month after launch.

Optimizing the site for shoppers and the back-end team

For the initial build of its BigCommerce site, LA Police Gear worked with an agency to re-platform the store from Magento. However, the team quickly realized the site was not optimized for the best performance, which led users to experience slower than average page load speed.

On top of this, the site was built primarily with custom-coded elements, making it difficult for the company to update and maintain without the support of a developer.

To best serve its variety of customers, LA Police Gear knew its online store needed a complete overhaul. After some research, the company found Groove Commerce and trusted the agency would enhance its site for both the user and back-end team.

“After meeting with Groove, we thought they were the best fit for the job. They're very professional and seemed extremely knowledgeable about BigCommerce. Overall, they are just really great to work with,” remarked Ryan Batenhorst, Operations Manager at LA Police Gear.

Groove knew overhauling the store on its Velocity framework was the perfect solution to improve the site’s Core Web Vitals while giving the company a plug-and-play back-end.

Velocity is Groove Commerce’s optimized framework, which allows brands to launch on BigCommerce in as fast as eight weeks. It consists of a lightweight template, a company-branded theme, Page Builder widgets, and custom-built apps. This framework enhances site performance and eliminates the need for hard-coded elements, allowing brands to update their site without needing a developer.

“With Velocity, we design custom widgets that inherit all of the styles for a customer’s online store, so they don't have to worry about updating styles or headers or anything like that. They can just focus on content and merchandising,” explained Justin Bright, Director of Technology and DevOps Engineering at Groove Commerce.

Providing customers with exceptional site performance

After launching the overhauled site, LA Police Gear noticed an immediate increase in its Core Web Vitals scoring. Due to Velocity’s lightweight template, the company’s First Input Delay score improved by 7%, representing that users now experience faster site speed.

This also led to a drastic improvement in the Content Layout Shift score, which indicates how often page assets move around as a user waits for the site to load. After the launch of the overhauled site, LA Police Gear saw this score improve by 6% for mobile users and 27% for desktop users.

Due to Groove’s Complete Care Managed Services, LA Police Gear continues to see improvements in its Core Web Vitals. In fact, three months after launching the overhauled site, its Content Layout Shift score improved by 12% for mobile users and 46% for desktop users.

“This is a huge area where we were able to make drastic improvements, as it's heavily influenced by effectively written CSS — something we have complete control over in the Velocity template,” explained George Arnold, Front-end Developer at Groove Commerce.

It’s safe to say the overhauled site optimized for the user journey significantly increased customer satisfaction. In fact, LA Police Gear noticed a 14% increase in revenue and a 67% increase in conversions just one month after launching the new and improved website.

As an added bonus, the plug-and-play Velocity framework has drastically minimized the amount of time and effort it takes for the back-end team to update the site.

“BigCommerce has definitely let us be less worried about the site. We can focus on growth and positive things instead of just fixes for a broken website or trying to keep things afloat,” explained Batenhorst.

The final word

As a customer-focused brand, LA Police Gear always listens to its shoppers and adjusts its online store to match their wants and needs.

Regularly checking your Core Web Vitals score is a great way to ensure your site is optimized to provide a seamless shopping experience. If your scores are lower than average, consider evaluating ways to improve your site’s performance so it doesn’t negatively impact the user journey.

Interested in learning more about LA Police Gear’s success with BigCommerce? Check out our case study to see how it’s taken advantage of the platform’s variety of features designed to grow its business.