Marksman Healthcare’s WordPress website was still functional, but the setup behind it had become increasingly difficult to manage. Visual Composer added friction to everyday publishing, the site was taking approximately 54 seconds to load, and a stack of 28 plugins created growing maintenance overhead. We redesigned and rebuilt the website around native WordPress and the Block Editor, improving performance, simplifying content management, and creating a cleaner foundation for future growth.
13.5x
Improved page load experience for visitors.
75%
Reduced setup complexity and maintenance effort.
99
Achieved near-perfect desktop Lighthouse score.
Business Context
Marksman Healthcare is a global Evidence, Insights, and Access partner serving pharmaceutical, biotech, med-tech, and consulting organisations. Its website plays an important role in how prospective partners understand the company. Visitors use it to explore services, access publications, review case studies, and engage with educational programmes.
For an audience of senior healthcare and pharmaceutical professionals, speed, clarity, and credibility matter. As the business and website grew, the existing WordPress setup was making all three harder to maintain.
The Challenge: A Working Website That Had Become Operationally Expensive
The website did not need another temporary fix. Three connected problems pointed to a deeper architectural issue.
01.
Visual Composer Had Become a Publishing Bottleneck
The site relied on Visual Composer for page layouts. That meant routine updates had to pass through the builder’s own row-and-column system instead of working directly with WordPress. Adding sections, changing layouts, or creating new pages increasingly required familiarity with the builder or developer support. As the website grew, that additional layer made content management slower and future improvements harder to implement cleanly.
02.
Page Loads Had Reached Approximately 54 Seconds
Performance had become a major user experience issue. At the time of engagement, some pages were taking approximately 54 seconds to load. For visitors arriving through search, referrals, campaigns, or direct research, that created significant friction before they could even engage with the content.
For Marksman Healthcare, performance was not simply a Lighthouse metric. The website needed to reflect the reliability and professionalism expected from the business itself.
03.
28 Plugins Increased Maintenance Overhead
The site also depended on 28 active plugins. Each additional plugin introduced another dependency to update, monitor, and test for compatibility. Combined with the page builder, the stack had become harder to audit and more fragile than necessary. Rather than continuing to optimise around that complexity, we decided to reduce it.
The Solution: Rebuild Around Native WordPress
Instead of replacing Visual Composer with another page builder, we rebuilt the website around native WordPress and Full Site Editing. The goal was not simply to modernise the editor. It was to reduce dependency, improve performance, and give Marksman’s team greater control over the website.
Moving From Visual Composer to the Block Editor
We replaced builder-specific layouts with native WordPress blocks and reusable editing patterns. The marketing team can now create and update pages through the standard WordPress editing experience rather than navigating Visual Composer’s proprietary layout system.
That makes routine content updates, publications, and landing pages easier to manage without developer involvement. We also included practical training and handover so the team could operate the new setup independently after launch.
Rebuilding Performance Into the Foundation
Performance was addressed at the architecture level rather than through additional optimisation plugins. We rebuilt the theme with a lighter frontend, removed unnecessary code and dependencies, and treated accessibility and performance as part of the implementation from the beginning.
The result was a 13.5x improvement in page-load experience and a 99 desktop Lighthouse performance score. The comparison shown in the case study moves from a Lighthouse performance score of 68 on the previous site to 99 after the rebuild, while accessibility and best-practice scores also reached 100.
Protecting Existing Search Visibility
A rebuild also needed to preserve the value already accumulated by the existing website. We mapped the site structure, migrated SEO metadata, preserved important URLs where possible, and introduced redirects where required. This allowed the platform to change without unnecessarily disrupting existing search visibility or inbound traffic.
Reducing the Plugin Stack From 28 to 7
Moving more functionality into native WordPress allowed us to remove a large number of dependencies. The active plugin stack was reduced from 28 plugins to 7 essential tools, a 75% reduction. That means fewer updates to manage, fewer compatibility points to monitor, and a significantly simpler platform for future development.
The Result
The rebuild changed both the frontend experience and the way Marksman Healthcare manages the website internally. The old Visual Composer setup was replaced with the WordPress Block Editor, giving the team a much more direct relationship with the content they were publishing.
Visual Composer
Block Editor
Operational Impact
The most important improvement is not simply the Lighthouse score. Marksman Healthcare now has a WordPress setup that is easier to operate, easier to audit, and easier to evolve. The internal team can manage pages, publications, and routine content updates through standard WordPress interfaces without relying on a third-party page builder.
The smaller plugin stack reduces maintenance overhead and removes unnecessary dependencies from future development. And because team enablement was part of the project from the beginning, the new system did not simply replace one technical setup with another. Marksman’s team was equipped to manage it independently after launch.
Visual Composer
Block Editor
Visual Composer Frontend
Block Editor Frontend
“It is always a pleasure to work with the entire LUBUS team. They consistently deliver outstanding results and are incredibly prompt in responding to emails and WhatsApp messages. I’m extremely satisfied with every project we’ve completed together. Having worked on multiple projects with them.”
Amit Dang
Founder
What This Means for Similar Organisations
Many established WordPress websites reach this stage gradually. The website still works, but updates become slower. The plugin stack grows. The page builder becomes increasingly embedded in the site. Performance declines, and making meaningful improvements becomes harder without introducing even more dependencies.
Replacing one page builder with another rarely solves the underlying problem. For Marksman Healthcare, the more sustainable approach was to remove that dependency altogether and rebuild around the capabilities already available within WordPress. The result is a faster, leaner website that the internal team can manage with greater confidence, while still remaining on the platform they already knew.
We managed the full engagement across strategy, design, WordPress engineering, content migration, SEO preservation, performance optimisation, and team enablement.