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SQUATWOLF - Headless Commerce
Problem
SQUATWOLF started on a WooCommerce storefront bolted to a Laravel order management system, hosted on Cloudways and GoDaddy's Pagely - a stack that couldn't hold up under peak sale traffic or scale product and order operations across growing GCC markets.
Solution
Over 3+ years leading a team of 3-4 developers, migrated off WooCommerce to a Laravel API gateway with dedicated OMS, PIM, and merchandising services on AWS (EC2, S3, RDS, Redis queues/caching, Laravel Horizon, Laravel Telescope), paired with a headless Shopify Plus storefront in Next.js and a Remix.js checkout - achieving 0% downtime on Black Friday and peak sales, backed by Grafana/New Relic monitoring and k6 load testing.
What I built
Product Information Management (PIM)
Product data and stock levels needed to stay in sync across the storefront and Google Ads so out-of-stock items didn't keep running ads, while launching sales simultaneously across multiple GCC countries required a faster way to bulk-update products.
Built a standalone Node.js/Express.js PIM service integrated into the core eCommerce management system for bulk product updates and automated Google Ads feed exports reflecting live stock, plus simultaneous multi-country GCC sale launches.
Order Management System (OMS)
Orders needed to flow automatically through loyalty, last-mile delivery, warehouse fulfillment, and returns without manual handoffs between systems.
Built a fully automated OMS where every order runs through a pipeline: LoyaltyLion for loyalty points, DHL and Aramex for last-mile delivery, picking/packing/labelling for fulfillment, and AfterShip for returns and refunds management.
Merchandising Service
Product recommendations were generic rather than personalised to shopper behaviour and traffic data.
Built a merchandising service delivering AI-powered product recommendations via Searchspring and Nosto, fed by Google Analytics data and tracked events piped through Analyzify and Datahash - a 20% conversion lift.
Checkout & Peak Traffic Reliability
Checkout was a performance bottleneck under peak sale traffic, and last-mile partner APIs (DHL, Aramex) risked being overwhelmed or rate-limited during spikes like Black Friday.
Rebuilt the checkout flow in Remix.js to cut load times, added support for additional payment gateways, and implemented rate-limiting configs for last-mile partner integrations to hold up under Black Friday-level traffic.
Marketing & Analytics Tracking
The main site needed accurate marketing attribution and event tracking across ad platforms and email marketing.
Integrated Google Tag Manager, GA4, Meta Pixel, TikTok Pixel, and Klaviyo on the main site for marketing attribution, event tracking, and email marketing.