Ecommerce brands today face immense pressure to stay agile and innovate continuously. Recognizing the need to optimize site performance, enhance SEO, boost conversions, and improve developer experience, Ruggable, a leading online rug retailer, embarked on a digital transformation with Vercel and Contentful.

Historically, Ruggable relied on a setup that was difficult to scale, with a custom Shopify theme built using Liquid and Slate. However, the setup limited the team's ability to adapt swiftly to market demands. With dependencies on Shopify apps and integrations for third-party functionalities, Ruggable faced challenges in delivering exceptional user experiences and maintaining competitive edge.

Moving beyond Shopify Liquid

In March 2023, Ruggable launched the headless version of Ruggable.com, powered by Vercel and Contentful. The migration involved moving from Shopify Liquid to a fully custom headless setup, enabling a composable approach to their ecommerce storefront.

The team’s decision to move to a headless architecture was driven by several pain points:

• Slow page load speed

• Low accessibility scores

• Lengthy build times

• Overburdened tech teams

• SEO penalties due to slow and unresponsive pages

Faster teams and faster sites since Vercel

Ruggable's transition to a headless architecture enabled the team to optimize site performance, enhance SEO, drive conversions, and elevate developer experience. The migration also played a pivotal role in facilitating team creativity and speed, ultimately leading to Ruggable's success in achieving zero downtime during Black Friday and delivering significant business impact.

Overall the team saw:

• SEO rankings improved by 75%

• 40% faster site speed

• 300% increase in unbranded search clicks

These substantial improvements to their frontend performance were due to a few key aspects in the new architecture:

• Content modeling with Contentful: All copy and images were modeled in Contentful, enabling support for multiple languages in various locales.

• Unified tech stack: Internal, operations, and ecomm teams now use React and Next.js for all development, streamlining processes and improving efficiency. They also integrate with Shopify for the things it's good at: checkout, payments, and order management.

• Marketing empowerment: Promotions, landing pages, and launches now take hours instead of weeks thanks to Contentful's ease of use. Marketing can confidently make site changes without developer resources, knowing that their modifications won't break the site or take it down.

• Developer productivity: By creating workflows for previewing and QAing new features without the need to publish an entire theme, development cycles accelerated rapidly.

• Reliability and scalability: Achieved 100% uptime during peak seasons like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, with zero tech issues or downtime.

• International expansion: Leveraged the unified content model to launch multiple domains in various countries with localized content and translations.

Looking ahead for Ruggable

Ruggable's transition to a headless architecture with Vercel has resulted in significant improvements in site performance, scalability, and customer experience, positioning the company for continued growth and innovation in the competitive ecommerce landscape.

Now, the team at Ruggable is planning to build on their success by further improving initial page load using SSG and next/font, and measuring their improvements with real customer data surfaced by Vercel Insights.

Additionally, they're aiming to roll out a customer data platform to bolster customer insights initiatives and drive better segmentation and on-site personalization. The goal is to create hyper-personalized customer journeys with AI-augmented content, recommendations, and tailored decorating and design advice using customer input.