Aussie Outdoor Gear: Doubling Conversion Rates with a Headless Commerce Transformation
Industry Retail & E-commerce
-
$10B+ Client Revenues
-
12+ Successful Years
-
1000+ IT Ninjas
-
5000+ Projects
Client's Testimonial
"We knew we needed to modernize, but the prospect of a full platform migration was daunting. The Developers.dev team were the perfect partners. They were not just Magento experts; they were strategists who guided us through the complexities of headless commerce. The result is a lightning-fast site that our customers love and our marketing team can finally manage effectively."
Michael Thompson, Head of E-commerce, Aussie Outdoor Gear.
Client Overview
Aussie Outdoor Gear is a leading Australian retailer with a strong brand and a large, loyal customer base. However, their monolithic Magento 1 website was slow, difficult to update, and provided a poor mobile experience, causing them to lose market share to more agile online competitors.
Problem
The client's legacy e-commerce platform was a major bottleneck to growth. Page load times exceeded 8 seconds, the mobile conversion rate was abysmal, and the marketing team was completely dependent on developers to make simple content changes. They needed a modern, fast, and flexible solution.
Key Challenges
Poor Performance:
The slow site speed was killing conversions and hurting SEO rankings.
Complex Data Migration:
Migrating decades of customer and product data from an old Magento instance without loss or downtime.
Lack of Flexibility:
The monolithic architecture made it difficult to innovate or create custom frontend experiences.
Mobile Experience:
The existing site was not mobile-first, alienating a huge segment of their audience.
Our Solution
We proposed and executed a full migration to a headless commerce architecture using our Shopify / Headless Commerce Pod.
⭐ Strategic Platforming
We used Shopify Plus as the powerful, scalable e-commerce backend for managing products, orders, and checkout. For the frontend, we built a custom, lightning-fast storefront using Next.js and Vercel.
✍️ Content-First Approach:
We integrated a headless CMS (Contentful), empowering the marketing team to create and update landing pages, blog posts, and promotional content instantly without any developer involvement.
🔄 Seamless Data Migration:
Our team developed custom scripts to carefully migrate all products, customers, and order history to Shopify Plus with zero data loss, executed overnight to prevent business disruption.
⚡ Performance Optimization:
The Next.js frontend was built with performance as the top priority, utilizing static site generation (SSG) for product pages and server-side rendering (SSR) for dynamic content, resulting in sub-second load times.
Implementation and Execution
Months 1-2:
Discovery, UX/UI design for the new storefront, and setup of Shopify Plus and Contentful.
Months 3-4:
Development of the custom Next.js frontend and integration with Shopify's Storefront API.
Month 5:
Development and testing of the data migration scripts in a staging environment.
Month 6:
Integration of third-party services (search, reviews, marketing automation) and rigorous QA testing.
Month 7:
UAT with the client's team and final performance tuning.
Go-Live:
Executed the data migration and DNS switchover during a low-traffic window for a seamless launch.
Positive Outcome
📈 110% Increase in Conversion Rate:
The combination of speed and a superior UX more than doubled the site's conversion rate.
⚡ 70% Reduction in Page Load Time:
Average page load time dropped from 8 seconds to under 2 seconds.
🚀 40% Increase in Organic Traffic:
Improved site speed and SEO-friendly architecture led to higher search rankings.
✨ Marketing Team Autonomy:
The marketing team can now launch new campaigns and landing pages in hours instead of weeks.
Why Choose Us
💡 Headless Experts:
Deep expertise in modern e-commerce architectures.
✅ Proven Migration Process:
A meticulous, risk-averse approach to data migration.
⚡ Performance-Obsessed:
A culture of engineering for speed and reliability.
🎯 Business-Focused:
Understood that the goal was to empower the marketing team and drive sales.
🛠️ Technology Agnostic:
Chose the best tools for the job (Shopify, Next.js, Contentful).
🔗 Seamless Integration:
Expertly connected all parts of the modern e-commerce stack.
📊 Transparent Project Management:
The client had full visibility into progress at all times.
💎 CMMI 5 Quality:
Ensured a bug-free and smooth launch experience.
🤝 Post-Launch Support:
Provided ongoing support to ensure continued success.
Conclusion
By embracing a modern, headless architecture with Developers.dev, Aussie Outdoor Gear transformed its online presence from a liability into its greatest asset. The new platform not only delivered staggering improvements in performance and conversion but also provided the business with the agility and flexibility needed to compete and win in the modern retail landscape.