E-commerce · Confectionery · Rochdale, Greater Manchester
A pick-and-mix builder for a sweet shop with 1,000 lines
By SimonMeasured 4 September 2026
A family sweet shop in Rochdale, trading since 2014, selling over a thousand lines by the kilo. We built the store around the way people actually buy sweets — build your own mix, filled to the gram, dispatched the same day.
0.00s
First contentful paint
live homepage, photography-led
Source: Browser Navigation Timing, 4 Sep 2026
- Client
- Roch Sweets
- Engagement
- Build plus ongoing retainer
- Live site
- rochsweets.com ↗
What this engagement was. A bespoke WooCommerce build plus an ongoing retainer. Search work began at the end of August 2026 and impressions more than doubled inside the first week; that is an early signal on a short window rather than a result, and it is described as one until there is a full month behind it. How every figure here is measured.
Watch it load
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First contentful paint
Measured at 0.86s. Browser Navigation Timing, 4 Sep 2026.
That is the whole page — on a phone, before most sites have drawn a header.
The numbers
And where they come from.
Nothing here is an estimate or an industry average. Each figure names the tool it was read from and the date.
0.00s
Full page load
71 requests, 1,000+ product catalogue
Source: Browser Navigation Timing, 4 Sep 2026
0
Cumulative layout shift
nothing moves as the page loads
Source: Browser Layout Instability API, 4 Sep 2026
0+
Product lines
pick and mix, retro, vegan and halal
Source: Live catalogue, 4 Sep 2026
The problem
What we were up against.
Sweets are bought by the handful, not the SKU. A standard WooCommerce store — one product, one price, one add-to-basket — does not model "a bit of this, a bit of that, filled to the gram". Roch Sweets needed a shop that felt like standing at the counter, on a phone, with same-day dispatch promised on every page.
The work
What I actually did.
- Built a pick-and-mix builder as a first-class feature rather than a bolt-on, so the mix is the product.
- Structured a thousand-line catalogue into the categories people actually shop by — fizzy, gummy, retro, vegan and halal — with seasonal ranges surfaced when they matter.
- Kept the promises visible everywhere: free UK delivery threshold, same-day dispatch cut-off and full allergen information on every product.
- Bespoke WordPress theme on WP Engine, so the team can run the shop themselves and the page stays fast with a photography-led design.
The outcome
A thousand-line sweet shop that renders its first content in under a second with zero layout shift, and a build-your-own-mix journey that works the way a counter does.
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