One thing you can do is to set up SnapShot Isolation. (Row Level version) This means that the select queries (Stored procs) from your website will be able to read the last committed data. It will not have to wait for the Replication to release lock before your Stored procs can read the data. It is a simple set up.

I did write an article regarding this. Check here.[/url]

I did not understand one thing though. You stated it takes 2 Hrs for the replication to complete. Does the updates that happen in publisher comes in Batches of Hundreds of thousands of records?