Antique e-commerce platform case study

Industry

Retail

Backend:

Python DRF

Frontend:

React.js

+ SSR

Client website builder:

Node.js

Next.js

Payment gateway integration:

UX analytics and workflow:

Timeline

2 years

Customer profile

With 120 thousand monthly visitors (81% of which is organic search traffic), Project A tops the list of most trusted and influential antique marketplaces in Great Britain. Project A specializes in selling antique furniture, jewelry, silver, ceramics, art, and much more. It is the story of how a large legacy platform overcame the growth challenges associated with outdated and overweight web infrastructure and with the help of COAX Software.

Note: To maintain confidentiality, our client chose not to disclose their company name. However, the challenges, data, and quotes you'll find in this case study are accurate. A curious reader can easily understand what project is being discussed by simply googling.For the convenience of narration, we named the client Project A.

Assortment in choice

Antique Furniture

Antique Jewellery

Mirrors

Silver

Antique Lighting

Chairs

Glassware

Sculptures

Clocks

Ceramics

Art

All Antiques

The Challenges

Project A entered the new decade as a leader among online antique marketplaces. Thousands of sellers uploaded their lots to the site every day, and tens of thousands of buyers successfully found what they needed.

Nevertheless, the marketers of Project A have long begun to sound the alarm.

The average page loading time for Project A was 6-8 seconds. This is significant because Google's recommended industry standard is 2.5-seconds.

A threefold rise in page loading time compared to the recommended norm inevitably led to a loss of ranking in search results. Google simply stopped recommending Project A pages first.

By that time, the number of marketing and product add-ons installed was also dramatically slowing the system down. Project A’s team could no longer fix the situation. It was impossible to integrate the variety of modules while maintaining the stability and speed of the platform.

Meanwhile, the size of the project's database had grown to 3 gigabytes. Not that the cost of server infrastructure was an issue, but it was impossible to work effectively with such a poorly organized, yet so complex database.

In short, the Project A team was tasked with resolving the following problems:

Re-building the entire infrastructure to reduce the likelihood of downtime to zero. Customers shouldn't notice any service interruptions, just improvements.
Speed up the working operation of the website by an order of magnitude.
Introduce multiple changes that improve the user experience and allow SEO to scale at a level that was previously impossible.

The Solution

After analyzing the web development market, Project A’s management contacted the COAX team. Things got going soon after, once that happened, the partnership developed easily and rapidly.

In short, the Project A team was tasked with resolving the following problems:

It took one week, four calls, and 10 hours of COAX teamwork to analyze the state and flaws of Project A's current architecture.
The COAX team split the current code array into product components and, together with the client, prioritized the sequence of work.
The platform, which had been in development for five years, was utterly rewritten within 12 months.
A dedicated team of several developers, QA engineers, and a project manager began work on Project's A marketplace on day one.
All communications with the stakeholders of Project A took place in a dedicated Slack workspace.

"From the first day, the COAX team established themselves as optimistic. After the guys spent a dozen hours sorting out our problems and never once talked about money, we realized that this team was ready to go the extra mile.

We were finally convinced of the prospects for cooperation when the COAX CTO came to our British office in person with a detailed presentation of the renovation. You will not often find such an approach in the outsourcing development market" says Richard Murray, CEO at Project A.

Attractive William V Upholstered Mahogany Armchair Desk Chair

REF: 30211 / LA41287

£1500

€1800

$2046

Buy now

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Certified Dealer

Approved listing

50 sales by dealer

Description

Attractive 19th Century William V antique uholstered mahogany armchair desk chair. The curved top rail above the deeply buttoned leather back and the shaped and fluted, partially upholstered arms terminating in scrolls and on acanthus carved supports. The generous-sized overstuffed seat with brass nail heads (needing upholstery). Supported on turned legs in front with brass caps and castors and with outswept rear support.

Features Shipped and Results Delivered

The platform's monolithic infrastructure was cordoned off into blocks and completely rewritten from scratch using a microservice architecture. Page loading speed dropped from 6-8 seconds to 0.5 seconds and their Google Core Vitals rank increased from below 20 to 90+.
COAX has completely re-invented Project A’s SEO. The same products can now quickly appear in several different categories. Each of which has a unique semantic core. This allows for traffic to grow organically without increasing the number of products.
A new admin panel was developed from scratch. Emphasis was placed on the pre-moderation of the content that sellers uploaded to the platform. This greatly facilitated the interaction of sellers with moderators and accelerated the process of adding new products.
The AI-powered add-on now helps sellers fill out product cards on the fly. Previously, this was a larger problem because the seller had to enter the product's material, the era to which it belongs, designate the category, etc. Now it is enough to enter "Victorian Chair," and the AI will instantly determine the class, material, century of production, all based on thousands of similar products.
COAX developed Project A's complete website builder. Now each seller can create a unique website (with a unique subdomain URL). This is important both for sellers, who position themselves as independent units, and for Project A, which pushes sellers to improve SEO and eventually attract more traffic to Project A's platform. A lot of effort has been invested in the design. Every page comes with a pre-installed design, which design professionals have worked on. This provides for the presentable look for every website and attracts even more sellers and buyers.
COAX did an excellent job on data migration as well. What was once 3 gigabytes, after optimization and migration, became a sleek 200-megabyte database.

Why partner with COAX?

Our main focus is providing successful and exceptional services. We believe in long-term relationships that bring value to both businesses.

We adapt

We adapt to our client’s’ business needs, constantly searching for new ways to fulfil their requirements

Shorter time to go-live

Dedicated and authorized teams deliver on the promised schedule.

Quality services

Our quality strategy is aimed to prevent defects, not just detect them.

Transparency

Our goal is to be a trustworthy partner, operating with honesty and transparency for long-term value

Data-driven decisions

We rely product analytics to make the right data-driven decisions.

Support for full lifecycle

Our team supports you from the stage of ideation, to production

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