WestWing: E-Commerce Website Development and Enhancement

Westwing executed a significant promotional campaign on the eve of Black Friday 2020. However, the project faced a challenge as it relied on outdated technologies that proved inadequate to handle the anticipated load in user activity.

Acknowledging the need for a resilient e-commerce solution, strategic refactoring, and optimization measures were implemented to efficiently support the user base throughout the critical Black Friday period. To achieve this, Westwing was looking for an experienced software outsourcing partner to join their distributed team as well as help them migrate from Shopify to a custom e-commerce solution.

Milies stepped in to provide crucial support by extending the software development team and joining the refactoring effort. As the overall load on the shopping platform should have increased on Black Friday, the system could have run into some performance issues. Memcached’s architecture does not support some of the capabilities that could have helped mitigate these performance issues. So, we decided to migrate from Memcached to Redis.

This strategic move aimed to modernize and enhance the backend infrastructure, ensuring it could withstand the high demands during Black Friday.

Through the implementation of caching and optimization of backend services, a notable reduction in response time was achieved. This not only enhanced the overall user experience of the e-commerce solution but also facilitated a substantial increase in request throughput.

The tangible outcome was the success of the Black Friday campaign. The improved backend seamlessly handled an impressive 200,000 requests per minute, contributing significantly to Westwing's profitability during this crucial sales event.

The collaboration between Westwing and Milies not only resolved the immediate challenges but also set the basis for a more resilient and scalable infrastructure.

Moreover, later we continued partnering with Westwing by providing a team of expert e-commerce software developers to work on functionalities like:

• Design and development of the Product Details page to showcase product information effectively;
• Integration of interactive elements such as image zoom, product reviews, and related product recommendations;
• Development and optimization of the Product Listing page to improve product discoverability and user engagement;
• Sorting and filtering functionalities to enhance the browsing experience;
• Dynamic loading for efficient handling of a large number of products;
• Responsive design for a consistent experience across various devices;
• Tagging system for cross-selling opportunities;
• Optimization of page loading speed for a smoother user experience.

Overall, the collaboration between Westwing and Milies not only resolved immediate challenges during Black Friday, but also marked the beginning of a lasting software outsourcing partnership.