Case Study: Migrating an E-Commerce Brand from Shopify to a Custom Stack
A growing DTC brand had outgrown Shopify. We migrated them to a custom headless commerce stack that doubled their page speed and conversion rate.
A direct-to-consumer artisan goods brand had built their business on Shopify. It served them well for the first two years, but as their catalog grew to over 500 SKUs and their monthly traffic exceeded 100,000 visitors, they started hitting limitations. Page load times crept up, the theme was difficult to customize for their specific merchandising needs, and Shopify's transaction fees were becoming a significant line item.
The Decision to Migrate
The brand came to us with a clear question: should we invest in Shopify Plus, or build something custom? After analyzing their needs, growth trajectory, and technical requirements, we recommended a headless commerce approach. Their content was a major differentiator, with rich storytelling around each artisan, and they needed a frontend that could showcase that content as beautifully as their physical packaging.
The Architecture
We built a Next.js storefront powered by Shopify's Storefront API for the commerce engine, keeping inventory management, order processing, and fulfillment on Shopify's backend where it excels. The frontend was entirely custom, with a headless CMS for editorial content, advanced filtering and search powered by Algolia, and a checkout flow optimized for their specific customer journey.
Performance Engineering
The old Shopify theme had a Lighthouse performance score of 38 on mobile. Our custom build scored 96. We achieved this through static generation of product pages, optimized image delivery, minimal client-side JavaScript, and edge caching. Page load times went from 4.2 seconds to 1.1 seconds on average.
The Content Layer
Each product page now tells the artisan's story with rich media: video, photography, and narrative text managed through a CMS that the brand's content team can update without developer involvement. This was impossible to achieve within Shopify's theme constraints.
The Results
Key Metrics (First 90 Days)
- Mobile conversion rate: 1.8% → 3.4% (89% increase)
- Page load time: 4.2s → 1.1s (74% faster)
- Lighthouse score: 38 → 96 on mobile
- Session duration: +40% increase with richer content engagement
- Transaction fees: Hosting costs covered by checkout fee savings
Within 90 days of launch, mobile conversion rate increased from 1.8 percent to 3.4 percent — an 89 percent improvement that directly impacted revenue. Average session duration increased by 40 percent as visitors engaged with the richer artisan storytelling content. Lighthouse performance score jumped from 38 to 96, and page load times dropped from 4.2 seconds to 1.1 seconds. Transaction fee savings from moving checkout processing off Shopify's native checkout covered the ongoing hosting costs entirely. The brand now has full control over their customer experience and the technical foundation to scale well beyond 500 SKUs.
Founder & AI Systems Architect, Untold.works
MIT Sloan AI Strategy · 20 Years in Production AI Systems
2026-02-14
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