LOVR
§6 — Current sites

An honest read on what's running today.

We couldn't help noticing a few things while we were looking at how Eagle Farm and Richlands sit online right now. None of it is anyone's fault. The vendor that built them is the Australian industry default for this category. But the technology stack underneath the sites is from a different era of the web, and it's affecting how the projects perform with buyers.

Eagle Farm SmartStores
  • · 8.5 MB Japanese font loaded on every visit — 86% of page weight
  • · HTTP/1.1 hosting protocol (modern is HTTP/2 or HTTP/3)
  • · Cache lifetime zero — every visitor downloads from scratch every time
Richlands SmartStores
  • · Page set to noindex — Google literally cannot see it
  • · Console errors every visit
  • · Version drift between rendering libraries vs Eagle Farm
  • · Same caching and hosting issues as Eagle Farm

None of this is destructive. Both projects can sell from the current sites. But for a brand at BP Wharton's tier, with the trajectory the portfolio is on, the marketing surface should match the calibre of the product. Right now there's a gap.