Project Beta
A performant e-commerce experience with sub-second page loads and fluid animations.
· Nova Retail · Frontend Engineer
Performance Astro E-Commerce
Overview
Project Beta focused on rebuilding Nova Retail’s storefront with a performance-first approach. The goal was to achieve sub-second page loads while maintaining rich, interactive product experiences.
Challenge
The legacy storefront was built on a heavy SPA framework, resulting in 8+ second load times on mobile networks. Cart abandonment was high and SEO rankings were suffering.
Approach
- Architecture — Migrated to an islands architecture (Astro) for minimal client-side JS
- Optimization — Implemented aggressive image optimization, font subsetting, and edge caching
- Interactivity — Used targeted React islands only where user interaction demanded it
- Measurement — Set up Real User Monitoring (RUM) to track Core Web Vitals
Results
- Time to Interactive: 8.2s → 1.1s (87% reduction)
- Lighthouse Performance: 42 → 98
- Conversion rate increased 23% in first quarter
Tech Stack
- Astro + React islands
- Cloudflare Workers for edge rendering
- Tailwind CSS for styling
- Web Vitals tracking with custom dashboards