Works | Site Unification for a Fortune 100 US Tech Brand
One Magento 2 Store to Replace Two Slow Ones: Codilar’s Fix for a Global Tech Brand
Execution Summary
Codilar orchestrated a rapid, future-ready commerce overhaul for a leading technology brand in the United States, unifying two sluggish regional merchandise sites into a single, modular Magento 2 estate.
The 10-week engagement delivered a three-currency, GDPR-compliant storefront, trimmed full-page load times by 45 percent, and migrated 22 thousand SKUs plus 180 thousand historic orders with under 20 minutes of downtime.
By integrating 22 best-of-breed extensions and automating blue/green deployments, Codilar created a scalable foundation that now fuels faster campaigns, stronger employee engagement, and a data-driven path toward direct-to-consumer growth.
Company
Overview
The client is a Fortune-100 networking and cybersecurity pioneer whose silicon, software, and services underpin the world’s internet infrastructure. With annual revenues exceeding US $50 billion and operations in more than 80 countries, the brand leads the enterprise market in secure, cloud-managed networking. Employee culture is central to its success; branded merchandise stores—once a back-office perk—double as living laboratories for showcasing the company’s own digital ambitions.
Historically, the firm operated two discrete Magento 1.x stores—one for North America, one for Europe. Each had diverging code bases, conflicting plug-ins, and page-load times north of ten seconds. Leadership recognised that these technical debts were eroding brand consistency, throttling voucher redemptions, and undercutting the enterprise’s vision of seamless, data-driven commerce. A scalable re-platform became a strategic priority, not only to serve 80 000-plus employees but also to establish a reusable blueprint for eventual B2B2C and D2C initiatives.
Objectives & Challenges
Strategic Objectives
- Elevate employee experience through a unified, three-currency store with one-click SSO and GDPR compliance
- Accelerate promotion cycles by integrating real-time tax, shipping, and coupon engines.
- Unlock operational agility via zero-loss migration and automated CI/CD pipelines.
- Reduce technical overhead by trimming page load to the 4.5-to-6 second range and cutting maintenance spend.
Challenges
Architecture & Performance
- Two legacy Magento stacks lacked multi-currency, modern payment gateways, and caching—resulting in 8–10 second page loads that drained mobile engagement.
Data & Integration
- Geographic data silos made it impossible to run unified analytics, while conflicting tax, GeoIP, and review plug-ins crashed on every upgrade, risking compliance fines.
User Experience
- Inconsistent branding and separate logins for web, kiosks, and POS created friction, depressing voucher redemption by ≈ 20 percent YoY.
Operations & DevOps
- Manual releases and the absence of blue/green deployments meant every change window jeopardised business continuity.
Solution Approach
Codilar deployed a modular, API-first architecture anchored on Magento 2.4.x, chosen for its scalable multi-store framework and mature extension ecosystem. Running in AWS multi-AZ clusters, the solution leveraged Redis and Varnish for edge caching and New Relic for real-time SLA enforcement. A blue/green deployment pipeline powered by GitHub Actions and Docker-based containers cut release risk to near zero.
Key design decisions and justifications
- Magento 2 Cloud over On-Prem – Offered elastic scaling and managed services essential for global launch surges.
- SAML SSO – Eliminated credential fatigue, driving adoption across web, kiosks, and POS.
- TaxJar + DHL/UPS APIs – Delivered real-time tax and shipping accuracy, reducing cart abandonment and ensuring compliance.
- Flat Catalogue & JS/CSS Merge – Lowered server response times below 200 ms, critical for sub-6-second renders.
Solution Highlights
Middleware & Extensions
- Integrated 22 best-of-breed modules—including InstaSearch for AI-driven discovery, Klaviyo for lifecycle automation, and Yotpo for social proof—reducing marketing launch cycles from days to hours.
Performance Engineering
- Implemented Redis, Varnish, a strict image-weight policy, and edge-level CDN rules, achieving a 5.1 second average load—well ahead of the B2B industry median of 7.8 seconds.
Blue/Green CI/CD
- Established an automated pipeline with GitHub Actions, Docker containers, and smoke-test gates, eliminating release-day outages and enabling weekly drops.
Scripted Data Pipelines
- Built delta-sync scripts for SKUs, orders, and customers, delivering a < 20-minute cut-over with zero data loss.
Experience Modules
- Added mega-menus, size-chart pop-ups, rich blog templates, and a “My Garage” wish-list that boosted repeat visits and cut sizing-related returns by an estimated 12 percent.
- “My Garage” was introduced to deepen engagement by letting employees save preferred product bundles.
Results and Impact
Operational Efficiency
- Maintenance hours decreased 60 percent, generating six-figure annual savings.
- Blue/green pipeline enabled weekly releases, replacing quarterly drop cycles.
Data Accuracy & Reliability
- Real-time tax and shipping logic cut incorrect-charge incidents by 92 percent.
- A unified data layer unlocked consolidated BI dashboards for marketing and finance teams.
Customer Experience & Revenue
- Page-load times dropped 45 percent (10 s → 5.1 s) and mobile transactions jumped 26 percent.
- Voucher redemptions increased 18 percent in the first quarter post-launch.
- Single-sign-on adoption surged to 96 percent, up from 61 percent pre-project.
Scalability & Future-Readiness
- Cloud auto-scaling absorbed a 3× traffic spike during a global product roll-out with zero degradation.
- Headless-ready APIs and modular services lay the groundwork for future marketplace and D2C channels.
Conclusion
From fragmented legacy stacks to a unified, future-ready commerce powerhouse, this transformation proves Codilar’s end-to-end expertise in scalable, seamless digital solutions. By blending architectural rigour with accelerated delivery, Codilar not only solved today’s performance pain points but empowered the client to seize tomorrow’s omnichannel opportunities—securely, data-driven, and poised for accelerated growth.
