By Jorge Mercado Thursday, December 19th, 2024

In 2021, the USA Olympic Swim and Dive team’s website saw a lot of new visitors. But there was one problem — the website was having trouble handling visitor traffic loads during peak times such as the Olympic Trials and the Olympic Games. 

So they turned to a local Santa Barbara company to ensure the same problem didn’t happen when the 2024 Olympic Games kicked off in Paris.

“We had introduced ourselves a couple years prior and provided a report… and then in February of this year they reached out to us and asked if we could help,” Michael Daoud, founder and CEO of Visus, told the Business Times. 

Daoud and his Visus team made up of about nearly two dozen only had three weeks to buff up the USA Swimming website and though it was a bit of a crunch, that proved to be more than enough time.

During the 2024 Olympic Games, visitor traffic on the site doubled over 2021 and during a 10-day period of the 2024 Olympic Trials, the site saw an 84% increase in users over 2021 and a 105% increase in website sessions as millions of eyes turned to the sport.

“Our new website didn’t even flinch,” Jacob Grosser, managing director of marketing and communications at USA Swimming, said.

“During the 2024 Games after the Visus engagement, not only did our website not crash, but we also never even saw slowing load times. Everything was seamless, even during peak times with millions of visitors to the site.” 

Daoud said the USA Swimming Team was “closely monitoring everything” and the website “never flinched.”

“It was a huge win for them and very satisfying for us to see our good work come through well for them,” Daoud said.

Though it was an impressive feat, it’s not a shocking one.

Visus has been around the Santa Barbara area for 30 years, first being founded by Daoud in 1994.

Visus is a digital transformation company, meaning it focuses on web development, content management, etc. and improves those back-end systems to help companies have greater operational efficiency and enhance the customer experience.

Visus was one of the first software firms to start up in Santa Barbara and though the area is now full of in-your-face software success stories like AppFolio and Procore, Visus has made an incredible impact of its own, especially here at home.

In the past, Visus has built the online ordering system for Rusty’s Pizza in Santa Barbara, built the website and ticketing engine for the Chumash Casino in Santa Ynez and even built Sansum Clinic’s website.

That is just a few of the firm’s Central Coast partnerships.

So while the company might not have a billion-dollar valuation, it has made a billion-dollar impact on the region with its tri-county partnerships.

“For me, this speaks highly of how a boutique firm can really be helping some larger clients move their technology initiatives forward by focusing on, innovation, quality and great customer service,” Daoud said.

“If you have those three, you have something truly special on your hands.”

Having been around for three decades, Daoud said the key to the company’s success has been simply keeping up with the latest advancements in technology.

“The beautiful part about all this is that you have two different layers. Layer one is the technology you have to keep up with, but layer number two is the fundamentals that you apply when it comes to operational efficiency or user experience,” Daoud said.

“Even with the advancements in technology, you use the same fundamentals and principles to attack and make improvements. So our approach when it comes to operational efficiency and enhanced customer experience has evolved over time, but the principal ideas behind them are the same.”

That is why when the team was tasked with buffing up the USA Swimming team’s website, they didn’t flinch –– just like the end product it ultimately helped create.

The Visus team upgraded the USA Swimming website to Sitefinity version 15.1. 

Sitefinity is a content management system that helps businesses create, manage, and optimize websites, intranets, and online stores.

That version of Sitefinity the team upgraded to delivers the ability to create a .NET Core application that serves as a client application to handle the presentation layer of the website. 

The other thing the Visus team did was migrate USA Swimming’s entire website data center from on-premises hardware in Colorado to Microsoft Azure cloud-based platform-as-a-service. 

Microsoft Azure has efficient scaling options that enable USA Swimming’s website to handle burst traffic on the fly. 

“The Visus team did a superb job of communicating with us,” Grosser said.

“They clearly defined the project, the deliverables, the timeline and the budget that we had allocated. We finished on time and on budget without having to invest additional dollars. From a project management standpoint, it is one of the easiest projects that I’ve ever managed. I was pleased with the upfront preparation. That led to zero surprises throughout the project and a very successful implementation.”

Daoud said he is “proud” of the work he and his team does, as it’s their work that allows companies to showcase whatever they need to the world.

“The work we do is very satisfying because of the impact we can make,” Daoud said.

“I’m very proud of all the work that we do and our clients love the work that we do as well.”

Daoud said the company had its best year ever in 2023 and despite some cutback on spending in 2024 because of nerves around the economy and the upcoming election, he believes the company is in good shape for a great 2025.

Daoud said the company has immediate plans to grow its team of 18.

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