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Web Development

A headless Next.js storefront that loads 3.1× faster

How re-platforming a Shopify store onto a headless Next.js storefront can cut load times and lift mobile conversion.

E-commerce brand2025Illustrative scenario3.1×faster loads

Illustrative scenario — a representative example of the kind of web development engagement this describes, not a specific named client.

A growing DTC brand has outgrown its theme. Sales are healthy, but every new merchandising idea means fighting Liquid templates and watching the page get slower.

Challenge

The storefront runs on a heavily customized Shopify theme stacked with apps. Each app injects its own scripts, and the cumulative weight makes mobile pages sluggish — the exact place most of the traffic lives. Core Web Vitals are red, and the team has stopped shipping front-end changes because every one risks breaking something.

The constraints are clear:

  • Keep Shopify for checkout, inventory, and the admin the ops team relies on
  • Escape the theme without a risky big-bang cutover
  • Make the front end fast enough that performance stops being a tax on growth

What we build

We separate the storefront from the platform and rebuild the presentation layer as a headless app.

  • A Next.js App Router storefront pulling products, collections, and inventory from the Shopify Storefront API
  • Static generation for catalog and content pages, with incremental revalidation so price and stock changes propagate in seconds
  • Checkout handed off to Shopify, so PCI scope and the ops workflow stay untouched
  • Deployed on Vercel with edge caching, and a component library that lets the team ship merchandising changes without engineering

Migration goes collection by collection behind a routing split, so traffic moves over gradually with no downtime.

Results

Figures below are illustrative of the outcome this kind of work targets — not a measured result from a named client.

  • 3.1× faster median page loads, with Core Web Vitals moving into the green on mobile
  • Measurable lift in mobile conversion off the faster experience
  • Merchandising changes ship same-day instead of waiting on a release

Keep everything you like about Shopify, and get a front end that no longer holds the business back — the core of our web development practice.

Back to work

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