Instead of starting by designing the homepage, we looked at real user behavior and put together a strategic project plan. We wanted to spend the most time on the most important pages of the site.

Most users go directly from search and social to a product landing page or category page, so we designed and tested those pages first. About half of online shoppers buy from their phones, so we focused on creating a simple mobile shopping experience and fast mobile checkout.

For more flexibility and freedom across the entire site, we developed the front-end in a componentized way, supported by a robust CMS. The experience architecture was crafted to extend to other brands under the ALDO umbrella, including sister brand Call it Spring or to launch new sub-brands, like ALDO Mx.

We built a new technical stack by focusing on two important metrics: flexibility and speed. That meant breaking apart the existing monolithic architecture and optimizing load times for images and videos across all breakpoints. For better end-to-end performance, we moved to a micro-services architecture connected to SAP Hybris with a responsive JavaScript (React) isomorphic application. At each layer of the application we incorporated unit testing, integrating unit tests directly into Continuous Integration & Delivery pipelines.