The Challenge
A premium fashion accessories brand selling handcrafted leather goods at $180–$1,200. Their standard Shopify theme was constraining the brand experience and underperforming on mobile — a 1.2% mobile conversion rate against a 1.8% industry average for luxury goods. We rebuilt the storefront as a headless Next.js application consuming the Shopify Storefront API.
Our Approach
We began with a structured discovery phase to map existing workflows, identify technical constraints, and define the highest-value features for the initial release. Rather than trying to build everything at once, we established a phased delivery plan with working software at each milestone.
What We Built
The storefront on Next.js 14 App Router uses a hybrid rendering strategy: product collection pages use ISR with a 5-minute revalidation window, product detail pages use ISR with a 30-minute window, and the cart is entirely client-side. The Shopify Storefront API is consumed through a custom typed client generated from the GraphQL schema using graphql-codegen, providing full TypeScript safety for all commerce data.
The 3D product viewer loads Three.js lazily only on product pages where 3D models are available, using an IntersectionObserver to defer WebGL context initialization until the viewer is in the viewport. The custom typefaces are self-hosted and loaded with font-display: swap to prevent layout shift.
"The storefront we launched looks and performs like what our brand deserves. The conversion rate improvement paid for the entire project within the first quarter."
The Results
The headless Shopify storefront launched on time and immediately outperformed the legacy theme on every measured metric. Mobile PageSpeed score improved from 34 to 97. The 3D product viewer — used by 31% of product page visitors — converts at 2.8x the rate of non-viewers.
Following the successful launch, the client commissioned a phase two project extending 3D model coverage to the full product catalog and adding an AR try-on feature for their flagship leather bag collection.