Snorkel.com: Final-Mile Launch in 10 Days for the HashTub Debut

What couldn't break

The new Odoo website was nearly there. Mobile Lighthouse benchmarked it at 56. A 3D customizer was loaded on every page, even on those that didn't need it. Render-blocking scripts stalled the first paint. Accessibility scans came back with real errors. None of these is unusual on a new build. Features ship and rough edges accumulate. But the HashTub microsite was about to send conference traffic straight to it.

Two things could not break:

• Live commerce. Snorkel sells accessories and maintenance items through the site every day. A regression in checkout would cause real headaches. The payment flow had to survive the cutover untouched.
• The deadline. The conference date would not move. Snorkel's agency D2 Creative brought ShakaCode in with 10 days on the clock. The job: deliver a brand-consistent, fast site ready for conference traffic.

Move fast without breaking things

ShakaCode's homepage promise: make slow web apps fast, without breaking your site. On Snorkel, the strategy played out as three disciplined moves, in this order:

1. Take over without ripping out work in flight. ShakaCode signed on Tuesday. By Wednesday morning, the team was in the codebase. A 90-minute technical handoff covered the existing Odoo build. No restart. The team absorbed the open work and focused on the launch-critical path. The delivery lead carried the final pieces over the line in the week of launch. No rewrites. No clean slate.
2. Measure before and after on every change. Without a baseline to compare against, performance gains are guesses. Every change received a before-and-after measurement. The discipline mirrors ShakaCode's open-source ShakaPerf project. The team led with the biggest wins, so every ship moved the numbers.
3. Hold the cap. The pilot offered a clean exit. If the work didn't earn the next phase, Snorkel could walk away with no merge and no invoice. Total billing came in inside cap.

Specific wins:

• Customizer page weight: 64 MB to 7 MB, an 89% cut. Images moved to WebP. Shopping page weight: 2 MB to 100 KB. 80% of pages measurably faster.
• Lighthouse accessibility hit 100% with all scans clean.
• Bitcoin payment flow survived the cutover untouched.

Production went live on April 23. Bitcoin 2026 opened in Las Vegas four days later.

What changed for Snorkel

Conference traffic flowed from the HashTub microsite to a Snorkel.com that finally matched its polish. The 3D customizer is now Snorkel's primary lead engine. Every quote request flows the customer's full configuration into Odoo CRM. Michael can update content himself, without a developer.

What Snorkel and D2 said

Asked at the post-launch wrap-up whether he would recommend the engagement to a peer in a similar situation, Michael said:

“I would have told myself yes, for sure. I was a little bit nervous because it was a time crunch. It kind of felt like a gamble at the time, but now it doesn't. In hindsight, it was absolutely the right thing to do, and I wouldn't hesitate to tell someone else to do that.”

-- Michael Diederich, Owner, Snorkel, Inc.

“The big blind spot for me going into this was the speed problems you guys identified when you first looked at it, and how quickly you addressed them. I had no idea how much it was going to improve. Now it's super slick. I don't know what wizardry and magic you put into that, but that was a big impact for me.”

-- Michael Diederich, Owner, Snorkel, Inc.

“You guys (ShakaCode) took what seemed like a nearly impossible challenge and ran with it. We're going to keep you on our roster of resources. I have no concerns about referring you to another project.”

-- Don DeVange, Founder, D2 Creative

“I really appreciate how you took over the management of the different moving parts and different vendors involved. That was one of the things that was really stalling us. Centralizing it on your end really helped to accelerate things.”

-- Daniel Stamm, Technical Lead, D2 Creative

In summary