A hosted store replaced with a serverless storefront
Food brand
For a food brand, we replaced a hosted store platform with its own storefront: catalog, product pages, cart, guest checkout, customer accounts and an admin area. The existing store was captured first, so the new one ran and was reviewed before any database existed. Storefront and admin were built in two days.
SpeedStorefront and admin built in two days
- storefront rebuilt
- catalog to checkout
- snapshot taken before migration
- yes
- 01
Built a full storefront
- 02
Built an admin area for products, images and orders
- 03
Captured the existing store to a snapshot
- 04
Kept product and collection addresses identical to the old store
The old store was snapshotted before anything was rebuilt, so the new site was checked against a fixed copy of the real one. Prices are always recomputed on the server, so a tampered basket cannot change what a customer pays.
The challenge
A hosted store platform was shaping the business through its transaction fees and checkout limits, rather than serving it.
Why it mattered
Every order carried the platform's cut, and the checkout could only do what the platform allowed. Owning the storefront puts pricing, checkout and the customer relationship back with the brand.
What we built
- Built a full storefront: catalog, product pages, cart, guest checkout and customer accounts.
- Built an admin area for products, images and orders.
- Captured the existing store to a snapshot, so the rebuild ran before the database was ready.
- Kept product and collection addresses identical to the old store, with redirects for the few that changed.
The result
- A storefront the brand owns, with prices always recomputed on the server rather than trusted from the browser.
- Online payments, with full and partial refunds issued from the admin order page.
- Search rankings protected, with old addresses carried across one to one.
- The blog migrated across from the old platform.
Built for trust
The old store was snapshotted before anything was rebuilt, so the new site was checked against a fixed copy of the real one. Prices are always recomputed on the server, so a tampered basket cannot change what a customer pays.
AI at work
Every product page describes itself to search engines and AI shopping assistants in a structured form they read directly, so a shopper who asks an assistant about the brand's products is pointed to the brand's own store. The team updates products in the admin and the description follows.
What it produces
- structured product listings
- server checked order totals
- one to one redirects that keep search rankings
- a re-runnable catalogue import
How it works, day to day
Product pages are rendered on the server with a structured description beside the visible copy. Search engines and assistants read it when they index the store, and the team changes products, prices and images from the admin.
Where it saves time, and gets better with use
- Shoppers who search through AI assistants reach the brand's own checkout, with no hosted platform's cut on the order.
- The catalogue import can be re-run safely: it updates each product at its address instead of duplicating it.
- Each product added in the admin carries its structured listing from the moment it is live, with no extra search work.
The technology
- A full storefront on your own infrastructure
- Admin for products, images and orders
- Reviewed against a copy of the old store
Technical notes
- Server rendered product pages with structured data
- Guest checkout with server computed pricing
- Database migrations applied in sequence to production
Questions we get asked
- Can you move a store off a hosted platform without losing search rankings?
- Yes. Product and collection addresses were mirrored one to one from the old store, with redirects for the few pages that differed.
- How fast was it built?
- The project history shows the storefront and admin area built within two days of the project starting, with payments, refunds, coupon codes and a migrated blog added the following day.
- Is the checkout safe?
- Prices are recomputed on the server from the database for every order, and prices sent from the browser are never trusted.
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