Cosmick Media is a women-owned digital marketing agency located in Pennsylvania. The agency prides itself on handling marketing and development services for the majority of pet stores in the United States. Beyond pet stores, their team also serves medium to large businesses in a variety of industries such as home services, home repair, contracting, attorneys, or real estate.
“Celebrating over 25 years in business, we are proud of our longevity and success in a rapidly evolving industry. This milestone reflects our ability to adapt and thrive, offering innovative solutions that meet our clients’ needs.”
Beyond the vast experience and constant improvement, Cosmick Media’s diverse team and ethos contribute to their success and growth:
“What sets us apart from our competitors is our comprehensive approach to digital marketing and development, combined with our commitment to diversity and inclusion. Our team’s varied backgrounds and perspectives enable us to understand and connect with a wide range of audiences. We hire and support team members from all cultures and beliefs, which enriches our perspectives and allows us to craft strategies that resonate with diverse markets. Our longevity in the industry is a testament to our ability to adapt, innovate, and consistently deliver results that exceed our clients’ expectations.”
Carley Kuehner, founder and CEO of Cosmick Media, joined us to explain how Kinsta contributed to her company’s success, how they increased operational efficiency, and how they grew client base by 50%. Read our case study to learn more about Cosmick Media’s journey and see some jaw-dropping metrics of its achievements with Kinsta!
Snapshot
- Industry: Digital Marketing, Advertising, Web Development, and Application Development
- Business size: 20-30 employees
The problem
In its early days, Cosmick Media hosted sites with companies suitable for accommodating smaller projects; GoDaddy and 1&1. Over time, these providers were no longer able to keep up with the company’s growth and demands, so Cosmick Media moved to dedicated servers on Rackspace’s platform.
“As we grew and matured, we quickly realized that we needed to outscale these companies to meet our clients’ needs. Within the past 10 years, we switched our solutions to a dedicated agency platform with Rackspace.”
Rackspace served the agency well for years, but some issues appeared that made them question if a dedicated server environment was sustainable.
Google Page Speed issues and downtime
One indicator that it was time to reconsider Cosmick Media’s server infrastructure was after reviewing their sites’ performance metrics on Google Page Speed. They started experiencing bottlenecks that needed to be addressed and resolved through optimization. This, Carley explained, was a tedious process demanding resource allocation:
We faced bottlenecks with Google Page Speed challenges, server-side caching, and minimization. Maintaining our own environment to adhere to trending technologies that assist with Google Page Speed practices was causing significant time and resource expenditures.
Performance and downtime issues were hurting Cosmick Media’s client sites: “One of our clients, a fast-growing online retailer in the pet store industry, was experiencing slow page load times and frequent downtime during sales events with their previous host. This negatively impacted their sales and customer experience.”
Overwhelming maintenance workflows
Server management in the dedicated environment brought numerous monitoring and maintenance tasks, such as server-side caching or minimization. These tasks gradually eroded the team’s resources, taking time away from the company’s core operations.
“We had to be responsible for many server-side technologies, which diverted our focus from our core business activities,” Carley reflected.
Solution
Performance-optimized infrastructure
Carley and her team wanted to improve Page Speed results without the need to engage in heavy optimization on a regular basis:
Kinsta stood out because of its advanced infrastructure powered by the Google Cloud Platform, ensuring fast load times and minimal downtime. Their partnership with Cloudflare and Google made the comparison night and day compared to our previous hosting solutions.
Utilizing Google Cloud’s Premium Tier network with over 37 data centers across the globe, ensures that users can choose a data center closest to their sites’ visitors. Kinsta also adopted Google Cloud’s fastest C2 and C3D virtual machines, which can bring up to a 50% boost to sites’ performance.
A global CDN network, available by default through Kinsta’s Cloudflare integration, helps increase latency even further. Over 260 PoPs provide a global reach to ensure that clients’ website content is delivered fast and securely.
Kinsta provides server-level caching, so there’s no need to use third-party tools or engage in heavy optimization processes to reduce server load times. Furthermore, Edge Caching ensures that website content is delivered from an edge server closest to visitors’ locations.
Carley compliments Kinsta’s performance as follows: “Their advanced server-side caching and optimization tools helped us overcome Google Page Speed challenges and significantly improved our website performance.”
Uptime and reliability
When you operate an online business or a shop, you’d like to ensure that your site is fast and protect it from downtime. Carley described above specific instance when a client experienced frequent downtime during sales events. Ouch! This, of course, is not something a user would like to have on their site during peak times, but moving to Kinsta successfully resolved the issue:
After migrating their site to Kinsta, we saw a 60% reduction in page load times and zero downtime during high-traffic periods. Additionally, the site’s Google Page Speed scores improved significantly due to Kinsta’s server-side caching and optimization features.
Kinsta’s 99.9% SLA-backed uptime, regular uptime monitoring, and expert support team transformed Carley’s perception of achieving success through a hosting partnership:
“The reliable uptime and improved performance have reduced bounce rates and improved user engagement on our clients’ sites. These changes have elevated our service quality, leading to increased client satisfaction and trust. Clients have expressed appreciation for the faster, more dependable websites strengthening our relationships.”
Intuitive dashboard with comprehensive tools
Operating a business site or managing multiple client sites does not have to be painful. Kinsta’s site management dashboard is designed to help bring ease to maintenance and development workflows. Constant improvement of the MyKinsta toolset and regular feature updates help flawless site management on the platform.
Carley expanded on her experience with MyKinsta: “Kinsta’s user-friendly dashboard and tools simplify site management, saving time and reducing the complexity of hosting multiple sites. The advanced security features provide peace of mind, knowing that your sites and data are well-protected.”
Support team of experts
Having a team of experts to rely on when a site issue or unexpected downtime occurs is imperative for agencies managing a large number of client sites. Receiving quality support at any time of the day has significantly contributed to Cosmick Media’s operations.
“Kinsta’s responsive and knowledgeable support team has been invaluable in helping us address any issues quickly, which allows us to maintain the high level of service our clients expect.”
Results
As a result of its web hosting alliance with Kinsta, Cosmick Media was able to achieve success and growth in various fields of its operations. Carley highlighted these areas and milestones achieved with Kinsta.
Improved client satisfaction through faster sites
“After migrating to Kinsta with almost 200 websites on an Agency platform, we immediately noticed significant improvements in website loading speeds and overall stability. The enhanced performance helped us overcome the bottlenecks we faced with Google Page Speed challenges. Without further internal optimization, we naturally jumped 20 points in a LightSpeed optimization report.”
As a result of Kinsta’s speed-optimized infrastructure, Cosmick Media reported that page load times were reduced by 60%. This resulted in enhanced satisfaction, trust and revenue growth among the agency’s clients.
“A client reported a 35% increase in sales and a 25% increase in customer retention rates during promotional events. The improved performance not only enhanced the user experience but also contributed significantly to their revenue growth.”
Business and revenue growth
The improvement in client satisfaction and the fact that Cosmick Media was able to devote more time to its business activities, has significantly contributed to client acquisition. Carley reflects on how Kinsta helped her company grow:
Kinsta has been instrumental in our agency’s growth by providing a reliable and high-performance hosting environment that scales with our needs.
Their infrastructure has allowed us to confidently take on larger projects and more clients without worrying about technical limitations or site performance issues. The combination of increased client acquisition and retention has led to a substantial increase in our annual revenue.”
They achieved a 30% increase in client retention. The numbers below, Carley shared, speak for themselves: “We’ve grown our client base by 50%, managing over 200 websites with ease thanks to Kinsta’s scalable solutions.”
Operational efficiency
Cosmick Media’s team no longer needed to engage in never-ending loops of server management and optimization. This freed up time and resources, so their team could focus on other areas and strategic growth.
We’ve reduced the time spent on site maintenance by 40%, allowing our team to dedicate more resources to innovation and client support. Kinsta has enabled us to focus on strategic growth initiatives, such as expanding our service offerings and entering new markets.
Carley also highlighted the MyKinsta dashboard’s role in increasing efficiency:
“The intuitive Kinsta dashboard and tools have streamlined our workflow, allowing our team to manage sites more efficiently and focus on delivering creative solutions. We no longer need to spend time maintaining our own server environment, which has freed up resources to focus on our core business activities.”
Specialization growth
Operational efficiency and improved site management workflows allowed Cosmick Media to serve a broader spectrum of industries.
“Kinsta has enabled us to focus on strategic growth initiatives, such as expanding our service offerings and entering new markets. We have solidified our position as a leading agency in the pet store industry and expanded our services to home services, home repair, contracting, attorneys, and real estate sectors.”
Conclusion
Carley simply said moving to Kinsta was one of the best decisions. The migration to Kinsta has brought Cosmick Media significant improvements in site performance and page load times and more effective site management workflows, which have resulted in business growth and expansion and a massive increase in client retention and acquisition rates.
The ease of scalability means you can grow your business without worrying about outgrowing your hosting solution. Their customer support is exceptional—responsive, knowledgeable, and always willing to go the extra mile to help.
Carley and her team won’t rest, though, she explained how Cosmick Media is planning to utilize Kinsta:
“Looking ahead, we plan to continue leveraging Kinsta’s advanced features to provide even more value to our clients. This includes exploring new technologies and integrations that can further enhance their online presence, such as advanced e-commerce solutions and application development.”
As a woman-owned company with a diverse team, we also appreciate Kinsta’s commitment to supporting businesses like ours. Overall, partnering with Kinsta has been a game-changer for our business, allowing us to focus on what we do best while trusting that our hosting needs are expertly managed.
