The White Boutique

Commerce Platform Migration

A lean-team migration from a WordPress-based commerce setup to an SEO-focused Next.js storefront and internal admin platform, delivered incrementally without disrupting live operations.

Role: Founding engineer and sole frontend developer in a lean five-person product team: one designer, two backend engineers, one product manager, and one frontend engineer.
System scope: Customer storefront, internal admin panel, SEO-focused commerce pages, product discovery, payment flows, reusable UI foundations, and cloud delivery workflows.
Scale & impact: The platform supported a business handling approximately AED 3M in monthly sales during my tenure.

Customer storefront

Public storefront preview; merchandising content may reflect updates after my tenure.

The White Boutique flowers product listing page filtered for Eid Mubarak occasions — Product discovery
Visit live storefront
Desktop catalogue browsing with filters, occasion-based discovery, sorting, and reusable product-card patterns.

Commerce journeys

The White Boutique desktop search overlay with category suggestions and storefront context — Search overlay
Desktop search interaction with category suggestions, product discovery results, and retained storefront context.

The White Boutique checkout customization page with gift message, envelope selection, order summary, and checkout progression — Checkout customization
Gift message, envelope selection, add-ons, cart summary, and payment-ready checkout progression.

The White Boutique mobile product listing page with products, filters, and sorting controls — Mobile catalogue
Compact mobile product listing with category navigation, product cards, filters, sorting, and sticky controls.

The White Boutique admin product management table with catalogue rows, product tags, pricing, and edit actions — Admin product management
Public-safe admin workflow for catalogue rows, category tags, pricing, visibility, and edit actions.

Problem

The existing WordPress setup was becoming limiting for a growing premium gifting business.

What I built

Owned frontend delivery for both the customer-facing storefront and internal admin platform during the initial MVP phase.
Built reusable commerce components and page patterns using Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and shadcn/ui.
Added a virtualized product grid to keep catalogue browsing responsive as the product range grew.
Integrated Apple Pay, Google Pay, Tabby, and Tamara through Noon Payments.
Worked closely with design, backend, product, and business stakeholders to shape product decisions and delivery priorities.

Constraints

The team was small and needed to deliver storefront, admin tooling, payments, and deployment capability in parallel.
The legacy WordPress workflow remained active during the MVP transition.
Product requirements evolved through active discussion with stakeholders and operational teams.
The new platform had to improve customer experience without interrupting ongoing business operations.

Technical decisions

Chose Next.js to support SEO-focused commerce pages and create a maintainable frontend foundation.
Used reusable UI primitives and shared state patterns with Context API, Zustand, and React Query rather than building one-off storefront components.
Applied virtualization to product-list rendering to protect catalogue browsing performance.
Containerized the application with Docker and created repeatable GitHub Actions CI/CD workflows.
Configured and maintained AWS delivery infrastructure across EC2, Elastic Beanstalk, Route 53, S3, and CloudFront for application hosting, asset delivery, and CDN caching.

Outcomes

Migrated the storefront from a WordPress-based setup to a custom TypeScript and Next.js application.
Created reusable UI, state-management, and deployment foundations that supported future iteration.
Reduced dependence on manual storefront workflows by moving key commerce journeys into a custom platform.

Technologies

Next.jsTypeScriptTailwind CSSshadcn/uiReact QueryZustandDockerGitHub ActionsAWSEC2Elastic BeanstalkS3Route 53CloudFront

Discuss a similar product