Mobile-first e-commerce platform with 35% better checkout completion

The situation

A tech accessories retailer had an existing WooCommerce store that had grown beyond the point where plugins could solve the performance problems. Mobile page load averaged 6.2 seconds on a 4G connection. The checkout flow required seven steps, had no saved addresses or payment methods, and timed out sessions without warning — causing customers to lose their carts. Checkout abandonment sat at 74%.

The product catalogue had grown to 4,000+ SKUs with multiple variants. Search was a WordPress search box that returned unranked results. Customers couldn't filter by compatibility, colour, brand, and price simultaneously. Mobile accounted for 68% of traffic but only 29% of completed orders — a conversion gap the business attributed to UX but hadn't been able to fix with plugins.

Every attempted fix ran into the same wall: WooCommerce's plugin architecture made each change slower and more fragile than the last. Adding a filter plugin conflicted with the caching plugin, which conflicted with the checkout plugin. The team had reached a point common to fast-growing WooCommerce stores — where the platform that got them started was now actively working against the next stage of growth.

What we built

Next.js storefront (web)

A statically generated storefront with Incremental Static Regeneration for product pages. Category and listing pages render at the edge via AWS CloudFront. Core Web Vitals target: LCP under 1.8 seconds on mobile. Product pages cache with a 15-minute TTL — long enough for performance, short enough that stock updates and price changes propagate quickly.

React Native app (iOS & Android)

A native mobile app for the core shopping journey: browse, search, cart, checkout, and order tracking. Shared business logic between web and app via a common API layer. The app was prioritised because 68% of the client's traffic was mobile, and native gestures and transitions convert better than a PWA in this product category.

Algolia-powered search and filtering

Product catalogue synced to Algolia for instant search with typo tolerance. Faceted filtering by brand, compatibility, price range, colour, and rating. Search results ranked by relevance score and manual merchandising overrides for promotional products. Average search-to-add-to-cart rate increased significantly post-launch.

Streamlined checkout (3 steps)

Collapsed from seven steps to three: contact info, delivery, payment. Guest checkout available without account creation. Address autocomplete via Google Places. Stripe Elements for card input — no redirect to a third-party page. Session persisted for 7 days so a returned visitor resumes their cart.

Inventory and pricing sync

Stock levels and pricing live in the retailer's existing back-office system, not duplicated in the storefront. A sync job reconciles both directions on a short interval, so a sale on the floor and a sale online can never both claim the last unit. This mattered more than any UI decision — the previous WooCommerce setup had oversold stock during high-traffic periods, which did more damage to trust than a slow page ever did.

Results

• ~35% improvement in checkout completion rate
• ~40% reduction in page load time (6.2s → 3.7s mobile LCP)
• ~25% increase in mobile conversion performance
• Search usage doubled within the first 30 days post-launch
• Checkout abandonment dropped from 74% to 56%

Where this fits

The web storefront and the React Native app were delivered as one engagement spanning our web development and mobile app development practices, sharing a single API layer rather than two disconnected codebases. For retailers outgrowing a plugin-based platform, that shared-backend approach is usually the difference between a rebuild that lasts and one you'll be redoing again in two years — something our custom software development team scopes on every engagement.