Shopify + Next.js headless e-commerce for a DTC brand

The previous site (Shopify Liquid theme) showed a 4.8 s mobile LCP despite many optimisation attempts. Mobile conversion plateaued at 1.2% vs 2.7% on desktop.

The brand wanted a premium experience aligned with its high-end positioning, refined animations, and strong editorial content — not deliverable by a standard Shopify theme.

International growth planned: FR → EU → US with currencies, languages, and stock differentiated per market.

Marketing wanted to iterate fast: landing pages, A/B testing, personalisation — without a dev ticket every time.

Headless architecture: Shopify Plus for the commerce backend (catalogue, cart, payment, stock), Next.js 15 for the front (Storefront GraphQL API, RSC for authenticated SSR, ISR for catalogue pages).

Premium design system: Framer Motion animations, page transitions, micro-interactions. But never at the expense of LCP: priority static hero, self-hosted fonts, AVIF/WebP images.

Multi-market via Next.js i18n routing + Shopify Markets: localised catalogue, currency, stock, tax, regulation (GDPR/CCPA).

On the marketing side: an autonomous editorial workspace to launch pages without developers, tooled A/B testing, and server-side measurement hardened for privacy.

CI/CD: per-PR previews, Lighthouse CI gate ≥ 95, axe a11y audit, blue-green deployment.

Mobile LCP: 4.8 s → 1.1 s. Mobile Lighthouse Perf: 47 → 98. SEO: 76 → 100.

Mobile conversion rate: 1.2% → 1.9% (+58%), overtaking desktop (1.8%).

EU + US multi-market launch in 3 months (vs 9 months initially planned).

Marketing autonomy: 30+ landing pages shipped with no dev intervention in the first year.