The challenge
The PHP was still running on PHP 7.2. The theme had been forked from a stock template four times. The checkout flow was a 6-page mess with three competing payment integrations. Mobile Lighthouse score was 31. The owner had been quoted between $150k and $400k by three previous shops to rewrite it.
What we did
Eight-week rebuild on Next.js with a headless commerce backbone. Migrated 3,400 SKUs and 14 years of order history. Replaced the 6-page checkout with a single-page flow. Re-architected images to WebP with proper responsive sizes. Kept the SEO equity intact through 600+ 301 redirects.
The outcome
Launched on schedule. Lighthouse 96 on mobile, 98 on desktop. Cart abandonment dropped to 58%. Page-load improved 6.4x. The team now ships checkout changes in a day instead of two weeks.