High-Performance Headless E-commerce Platform
1M+ Daily Sessions
Retail e-commerce brand (confidential)
12 weeks (rebuild + migration)
Tech lead, Frontend dev, Backend dev, DevOps, QA
Situation
The existing storefront struggled during campaigns: slow pages, cart failures, and brittle integrations. The business wanted a modern headless build that could scale without "emergency deploys" during traffic spikes.
Objectives
- Improve performance (Core Web Vitals + real conversion impact)
- Reduce downtime during promotions
- Make integrations resilient (inventory, payments, shipping)
- Add security controls suitable for a public, high-traffic target
What We Did
Rebuilt the frontend with strict budgets for bundle size, render strategy, and caching. Treated performance as a feature.
Added retries with backoff, circuit breakers, and queue-based synchronization. Implemented clear user messaging when downstream services degraded.
Implemented rate limiting, bot protection, hardened session handling, and separated public storefront from internal admin tools.
Challenges & Solutions
SEO migration risk
Solution: Created redirect maps, tested crawl paths, and staged releases by category.
Campaign "unknown unknowns"
Solution: Ran load tests on real user journeys and fixed bottlenecks (search, PDP, checkout).
Vendor outages
Solution: Implemented graceful degradation so the site stayed functional even when third parties degraded.
- Uptime improved to 99.99% during peak campaigns
- Page load times reduced by 45% on top traffic pages
- Conversion rate lift of 15% attributed to speed + stability improvements
Deliverables
- Headless storefront + deployment pipeline
- Resilient integration services
- Security hardening checklist + monitoring