90% faster load times and 33% higher conversion rate: here's how Saranoni did it 🚀

Saranoni's luxury blankets become go-to gifts for growing families

What began in 2006 as a way to fund their daughter's medical procedures has grown into Saranoni, a luxury blanket company dedicated to bringing comfort and connection to families. Founded by Emily and Nathan Peterson, Saranoni evolved from curated gift baskets to focus exclusively on premium, personalized blankets and home goods. Following Nathan's passing in 2022, Emily has carried forward their mission of creating products that help families treasure moments together.

Their ecommerce site plays a crucial role in helping customers personalize embroidered blankets, and they expanded their product catalogue to include plush robes. While a Shopify theme was a great way to start the business, the gap between the brand’s needs and what the theme could offer continued to grow.

Challenge

Sluggish page loads, 20+ apps, and a broken product customization system limited growth

Like many growing e-commerce brands, Saranoni had finally outgrown their traditional Shopify theme setup. The team was seeing:

• Sluggish page load times (14-20 seconds for product pages with personalization, 5-second load times for homepage)
• A bloated tech stack, with over 20 apps that were contributing to the site speed issue
• Limited design flexibility and customization options (live-previews for product personalization just weren’t possible)
• Glitchy user experience and code issues due to app conflicts

Overall, these challenges were slowing down the team, frustrating shoppers, and ultimately hurting sales. Marie Nielsen, who handles product development and marketing at Saranoni, shared:

Goals

Find a new development resource, fix the site speed issue, and help customers live-preview personalized products—in record time.

After struggling with their previous development partner for two years, Saranoni was introduced to SiteSource through a marketing consultant. The change was transformative. Nielsen shares:

Together with SiteSource, Saranoni identified several key objectives for their website improvements:

• Dramatically improve site speed and performance
• Implement a live preview feature for product embroidery
• Simplify their tech stack by consolidating apps
• Create a more flexible and customizable way to manage content
• Maintain Shopify as their commerce backend
• Improve overall conversion rates
• Launch the new experience in time for their customer appreciation week

While it was an ambitious agenda, the SiteSource team got to work right away to solve the team’s core challenges before their looming deadline.

Solution

In just two months, SiteSource rebuilt Saranoni's site with Pack + Hydrogen, replacing 20+ apps with a scalable, modern approach.

SiteSource’s deep understanding of Saranoni’s challenges and goals, thorough review and QA process, quick, clear communication, and strategic focus was exactly what the Saranoni team needed to get their website back on track.

After in-depth discovery and analysis, SiteSource recommended Pack as the ideal solution, with an approach that included:

• A Shopify Hydrogen storefront built on Pack's Blueprint theme that kept Shopify's familiar backend while improving frontend performance
• Pack’s easy-to-use content management system + CRO tools for the Saranoni team
• Simplified tech stack that cut over 20 unnecessary apps
• Custom embroidery preview feature that lets customers see personalized items in real-time
• Complete site rebuild in just 2 months (compared to 2+ years painful iteration with previous partner)

While making the switch from a theme to Pack + Hydrogen was a big decision, Nathan Call, Founder at Site source recalls:

For Saranoni, the decision made sense because:

Once Saranoni gave the green light, the migration process was fast and efficient, taking just two months from start to finish. The team launched their new Pack + Hydrogen-powered site in August, meeting the deadline for their customer appreciation week.

Results

Pages now load in 1-2 seconds instead of 20, conversions are up 33%, and the team can update the site themselves.

The impact of moving to Pack was immediate and significant. "Our conversion rates have jumped a whole percent in comparison to where they were last year," Nielsen reports. "We were at 2.7% conversion rate, and jumped to consistently be around 3.6%."

Key performance improvements include:

• Page load times reduced from 5-20 seconds to under 2 seconds across all pages
• 50% reduction in total server requests
• Consistent 3%+ conversion rate, almost a full 1% increase
• Eliminated 20+ unnecessary apps, resulting in cost savings
• Dramatically improved site maintenance efficiency

In addition to significant impacts to the bottom line, for the Saranoni team, daily operations have also dramatically improved: "I'm in Pack almost on a daily basis changing things like the hero banner, updating products, and editing the product menu," Nielsen explains. "It was just so much easier to use than when we had tried to do it all on a Shopify theme." The improved content management system helps the team to be more responsive to customer needs and market opportunities, with the ability to make quick updates without developer support.

SiteSource's commitment to helping the team help themselves has been key to this success. "We're big on the teach-you-how-to-fish mentality," Call explains. They help the Saranoni team add new features to the site, but the Saranoni team can manage day-to-day updates independently: "When SiteSource does add a new feature, they teach me how to use it so then I'm able to use it going forward," Nielsen adds.

The new system has also empowered the Saranoni team to make updates more efficiently. Nielsen notes:

Looking Forward

Run A/B tests, expand corporate gifting, and manage site changes—all without relying on a developer for every update.

Here's what's next for Saranoni and Pack:

• Implement A/B testing to optimize their site experience
• Expand their new corporate gifting site
• Get content updates out the door quickly
• Find new ways to improve the shopping experience

The Saranoni team has finally found a sustainable way to manage and grow their site. With faster page loads, better conversion rates, and a site they can actually manage themselves, Saranoni is ready to focus on what they do best: creating personalized, luxurious comfortwear that shoppers love.