Since its establishment, the Couristan name has been synonymous with the most exquisite handmade and power-loomed area rugs available from anywhere in the world. It is also one of the household names when it comes to delivering quality residential and custom contract/hospitality carpeting.

Founded in 1926 by brothers Basil J. Couri and George J. Couri, Couristan has been privately owned and operated by the Couri family for two generations until today. The company takes much pride in continuing to be a family-run business, believing that it is their responsibility to provide customers with only the best products that the floor covering industry has to offer in today’s marketplace.

The Problem

The primary objective of this project was to provide Couristan Hospitality with an updated version of its current website.

Couristan expressed some major concerns regarding their core web product database location as being external to the web server and hosted on a 3rd party Microsoft SQL server.

This technical constraint resulted in frequent timeout issues along with general slowness throughout which ultimately affects customer experience every time the system is unable to access the user’s request.

Analysis

Frequent timeout issues and general slowness of Couristan’s former website occur because with their product database being hosted on a 3rd party Microsoft SQL server, the code needs to traverse multiple locations every time a query is initiated. This causes massive delays in search queries and a technical bottleneck in providing current web based

The Solution

MAXBURST recognizes that uptime is crucial in practice as maintaining a high uptime ratio will not only give Couristan customers important trust signals, but will also improve the website’s traffic, sales, and page views in the long run. This, in addition to focusing on accessibility and security solutions, tighter social integration, and improvement to content management and SEO, were among the key features MAXBURST has worked on for this project.

To address the primary concern raised by the Couristan team, MAXBURST focused on the following deliverables for this project.

Site Migration

  • Utilizing all the latest available technologies to optimize the user and admin experience, MAXBURST migrated the former Couristan site into a single content management platform powered by WordPress.
  • MAXBURST custom coded and crafted the chosen wireframe design layout to be mobile responsive in order to render properly on all mobile tablet and desktop platforms.
  • The new website framework was built on the LAMP stack (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) using the Bootstrap mobile responsive grid to ensure that every device renders the website correctly and optimally to the user.
  • MAXBURST also custom developed an intuitive and simple to use administration system with a strong focus on news/blogs.
  • The system was integrated seamlessly into the new WordPress CMS site for the admin to post new article content.
  • Admins were also given the ability to add and select categories for content tagging and SEO scalability.

Accessibility and Security Solutions

In addition to addressing the primary concern, MAXBURST also deployed advanced website accessibility solutions and ensured a comprehensive legal & regulatory compliance framework covering ADA, Section 508, WCAG 2.1 AA.

Captcha anti-spamming tools and email verification for all web forms were also added to prevent SPAM and Malware. MAXBURST utilized industry standards and best practices for web security and intrusion detection along with a Web Application Firewall, Malware Scanner, Real-Time Threat Defense Feed, and Block Brute Force Attacks.

Content Audit and Improvement

To fully maximize the improvement in page loading speeds and uptime, MAXBURST also helped in identifying Couristan’s top pages for revisions and recommendations to strategically write existing content and establish the company’s brand to the next level through search engines.

  • We have Integrated SEO Optimized Plugins and custom theme coding in WordPress.
  • Installed and configured the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress along with a clean structure that uses proper and valid coding techniques.
  • Set up 301 permanent redirects in an HTACCESS file for old to new links to preserve SEO rankings.

Tighter Social Integration

Maxburst’s new design also included the ability for admins to create shareable content (e.g. calendar events, news) seamlessly to several social media platforms. This allows them to integrate all existing social media campaigns into the new website so that users can interact with social media sites like Facebook and Twitter right from the new web platform.

The Results

With Couristan’s new website URL located at hospitality.couristan.com, we have introduced new features, an updated interface, and leveraged the latest CMS Framework.

The new website will provide its users with an entirely web-current online presentation that is easy to navigate, simple to find information, and an effortless approach to browsing on multiple browsers and devices, including mobile platforms with a responsive layout system.

The new website also boasts of a much improved 88% website performance and higher load speeds at 3.42.

With improvements to content and SEO programs tailored fit by MAXBURST’s Social Media and SEO marketing experts for the company, this added value will also help Couritsan establish a stronger social presence.

Additional KPI’s mentioned from RFP:

Project Portfolio, Contract/Hospitality Collections
Online Design Archive
Programmed Stocked Products Area Rugs and Carpets from Residential Division

Social Media Gallery or News Band
Content from Current Site Map/Navigation
Virtual Show and Color Trends Sections “Color Vibes”