Our Work

Services Provided

Canterra Seeds supplies seed products to farmers throughout the Canadian Prairies and Western Canada. Their website is a key resource for customers with seed performance data, retailer locations, and an interactive virtual tour of available varieties. The site’s design still worked well for them, but their ExpressionEngine 5 install had developed technical SEO issues that were negatively impacting search performance. They partnered with Hop Studios to handle the ExpressionEngine upgrade, resolve the SEO problems, and improve website performance and usability for visitors and admins alike.

We started with a comprehensive ExpressionEngine CMS upgrade assessment to map out what the upgrade would actually require. From there, we moved to fixing the technical SEO issues, improving page load speed, and optimizing the website’s overall performance and usability. Every stage was reviewed and signed off by the Canterra Seeds team before we moved to the next, which kept the project on track and within budget.

To help improve search visibility, we resolved several technical SEO issues by fixing broken links, cleaned up 404 error handling, and stopped search engines from indexing pages that shouldn’t have been indexed in the first place. To measure the impact of how those changes were performing, we set up Google Search Console and analytics. We trained the Cantera Seeds team to efficiently manage the upgraded site so they could keep an eye on results over time, and make additional changes themselves.

Because a CMS upgrade is quite a complex block of work, we built a dedicated staging environment so the team could test the upgraded site thoroughly before anything went live without impacting day-to-day operations while they reviewed and tried things out. We upgraded their website from ExpressionEngine 5 to ExpressionEngine 7, the first major CMS upgrade in six years, working through more than 2,300 content entries. We ensured they were using the latest features of the upgrade as well—no sense in driving a Porsche in 3rd gear. This included tuning entry layouts, image compatibility mode, and consolidating fields where possible. Simultaneously, we upgraded PHP and MySQL, migrated their hosting from Linode to Canadian-based FullHost, and installed Cloudflare to improve website performance, security, and reliability.

The ExpressionEngine upgrade delivered measurable improvements. Database query optimization noticeably reduced page load times to serve a faster, more responsive experience for visitors. We also replaced several third-party add-ons with ExpressionEngine’s built-in features, which reduced technical overhead and made the CMS easier to maintain. The result: a faster website, a simpler content management workflow for the Canterra Seeds team, and a modern CMS that’s easier to manage and better set up for future growth.

We also developed a dedicated ExpressionEngine landing page for Canterra Seeds’ MakeMoreBread campaign, promoting their high-yield specialty wheat varieties. The page includes an interactive calculator that lets farmers compare projected yields and costs against competing varieties. We worked from Canterra’s own design wireframes, matched their branding, configured a campaign domain redirect, and added Google Analytics to track engagement and campaign performance.

We look forward to continuing the partnership with Canterra Seeds, keeping their ExpressionEngine CMS up to date with strong website performance as the overall goal so their website can be as responsive to their customers as Canterra Seeds are in every other way.