BreakerYard operates a busy online marketplace connecting customers with vehicle breakers to buy used car parts. With thousands of visitors and real-time interactions daily, delivering consistently fast, reliable performance was crucial to both user experience and business outcomes. ComputerMinds partnered with BreakerYard to diagnose bottlenecks, apply targeted improvements, and ensure the platform remained performant as it evolved.
About the project
The Challenge
BreakerYard.com’s high volume of customer and seller engagement exposed performance limitations and technical debt over time. The site needed:
- Reliable, fast load times under heavy use
- Performance that supported ongoing functionality enhancements
- Strong Core Web Vitals scores to protect search visibility and SEO
- A scalable foundation to maintain conversions and user trust
Balancing rapid feature delivery with performance stability proved difficult, particularly given legacy custom code that wasn’t optimised for scale.
Solution Approach
ComputerMinds took a pragmatic, data-driven approach to tackling performance challenges on the BreakerYard Drupal site, including:
1. Performance Diagnosis and Prioritisation
The team worked collaboratively with BreakerYard to regularly assess performance issues, prioritise work items, and balance business needs with technical improvements. This ongoing dialogue ensured the most impactful issues were addressed first.
2. Smart Caching Using Drupal APIs
Beyond HTTP page caching, which alone was insufficient for this dynamic site, targeted caching layers were implemented using Drupal’s caching APIs. By identifying and caching frequently accessed data rather than re-computing or re-fetching it on every request, the team significantly reduced server processing overhead.
3. Code Optimisation
Inefficient custom code was refactored or replaced based on performance measurements. Instead of simply scaling up server resources, developers focused on making the application code itself leaner and faster.
4. Front-End Enhancements
Improvements such as lazy-loading images and preloading critical assets helped enhance perceived performance and reduce initial load times—contributing to better Core Web Vitals scores.
Impact and Results
By applying these targeted performance strategies, BreakerYard saw measurable improvements that benefitted both users and the business:
- Up to 10Ă— faster key interactions: Critical parts of the user experience now respond dramatically more quickly.
- Sustained Core Web Vitals performance: Even as new features were added, the site maintained healthy scores on key metrics that impact search ranking and user engagement.
- Improved SEO performance: Faster site performance contributed to better search engine visibility over time.
- Stronger user trust: Reliable performance on time and within budget reinforced confidence from BreakerYard stakeholders.
- Reduced resource usage: Smarter code and caching reduced compute load, contributing to a “greener” footprint.
Key Lessons and Best Practices
This engagement highlights several best practices for Drupal performance optimisation:
- Regular prioritisation with stakeholders ensures technical work aligns with business impact.
- Use Drupal’s caching APIs effectively to minimise repetitive processing.
- Measure before rewriting: gathering performance data leads to better decisions about where optimisation matters most.
- Front-end performance matters: optimisations like lazy loading and asset preloading improve both metrics and user experience.
Why Drupal was chosen
BreakerYard have been operating on Drupal for many years, they originally chose Drupal for its flexibility and ability to handle complex data structures.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
