HEADLESS WORDPRESS
Achieving Peak Performance With Headless WordPress
To improve search engine rankings and the browsing experience for its 50 million monthly readers, Android Authority increases speed 6x by adopting a headless architecture with a WordPress backend.
Site:
Industry:
Digital Publishing
“We couldn't have made this happen without WP Engine and Atlas. The other options out there either don’t offer the WordPress experience we required, or the headless platform power we need for a website of our size and expected growth.”
— Tayo Onabule, Head of Product, Android Authority
50M
Monthly site visitors
6X
Improvement in Google Lighthouse scores
30%
Improvement in sitewide performance
The Client
Android Authority is the largest independent publication dedicated to the world's most widely used operating system—Android OS. Every month, the digital publication influences an audience of 50 million technology enthusiasts, industry professionals, and savvy millennials. The Android Authority team is a diverse coalition of expert writers, device reviewers, videographers, journalists and Android developers who have come together under a united passion: a love of mobile technology and the determination to deliver top-notch content.
The Challenge
Build for growing site traffic and performance tied to revenue without disrupting publisher workflows. Future-proof site to increase flexibility and ease of development, decreasing time to innovation.
The Solution
Upgrade from a traditional WordPress deployment to Atlas, WP Engine’s headless WordPress hosting platform.
The Results
With headless architecture via Atlas in place, Android Authority has seen both immediate results and positive indicators for the future.
From a performance standpoint, pages across Android Authority's website and mobile application are loading more than 30% faster.
This has improved Lighthouse metrics by as much as 6X, and all of the site’s Core Web Vitals have strengthened to green or “good” thresholds for both mobile and desktop users.
Core Web Vitals focus on site performance and overall user experience, and they now play a larger role in Google's search rankings
While faster page speeds have provided site visitors with a better user experience, they’ve also boosted Android Authority far beyond its competitors.
Android Authority is now faster on desktop and mobile than any other competing tech media site.
Its direct competitors don’t even come close with an average Lighthouse score of 25 and red Core Web Vitals across nearly all categories.
Due to the added speed and the refreshed site layout, Android Authority’s ad revenue also began to increase within one month of moving over to the headless configuration.
“We expect these numbers to go higher as traffic flow accelerates,” Onabule said.
“But by all accounts—across performance and scale as they’re tied to user experience and ad revenue, our foray into headless has been an absolute success.”
Much of that success, he added, was rooted in the Atlas solution itself, and the benefits it includes for sites of Android Authority's size and needed scale.
“We couldn't have made this happen without WP Engine and Atlas,” Onabule said. “The other options out there either don’t offer the WordPress experience we required, or the level of hosting we need for a website of our size and expected growth.”
“This was truly a unique win that combined Android Authority's pioneering tech spirit with the great partnership and powerful solutions only WP Engine can provide.”
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