Eva.ua is the leading Ukrainian drogerie retail chain, showcasing an impressive footprint with 1100 offline stores, over 70,000 SKUs available online, and a remarkable influx of 27,000 orders and 500,000 visitors per day during the Black Friday events.

Our journey with Eva.ua began in 2019, addressing the critical challenges posed by their super slow Magento-based store, which suffered from 10-second page loads and frequent downtimes. Our efforts have been focused on delivering significant improvements in performance, speed, and efficiency of the online store, which ultimately led to a doubling of sales.

The enhancements implemented have proven their worth, enabling the site to support more than 11,000 simultaneous users during peak traffic periods without faltering. During the height of the Black Friday promotion, the site handled up to 1 order per second, all while the system's load remained below 50% of its capacity. This robust performance is underpinned by a sophisticated architecture and technology framework that allows for a bandwidth increase of at least 5-7 times within a few hours if needed.

Moving to Vue Storefront

Why move to PWA?

• Cut costs for development, support, and maintenance
• Speed up time to market of new features. It’s faster to update PWA than regular web store and a few versions of the native app, passing all the review processes to roll up the updated version on marketplaces.
• SEO benefits. Unlike Native apps, PWA works like any website so it can be indexed by search engines. Compared to normal/responsive web pages, PWA has increased performance and engagement, helping your website rank better in search results.
• Performance improvements. Native Magento frontend performance is always a hot topic. It requires a lot of efforts to improve the scores for at least a few points. And it becomes just more complicated when you use a lot of third-party system integrations. But all of them are important from a business perspective. Wisely implemented PWA solution helps to solve this dilemma.

How much time and resources Vue Storefront theme development take?

We embarked on the journey to develop a new PWA solution for eva.ua in April 2021, which culminated after a year. The decision to opt for Vue Storefront was made in collaboration with the eva.ua team, influenced by developer feedback and the robust list of features available right out of the box.

What challenges did we face during the development?

While Vue Storefront stands as a leading PWA solution, it is not without its challenges. The platform is in a state of constant evolution, improving with each version. However, we encountered several issues:

• Filter functionality was limited to configuration settings and did not integrate with Magento's native filtering capabilities.
• The default checkout process did not meet our specific requirements, necessitating custom integrations for shipping and payment methods, promo codes, and a tailored checkout experience for logged-in users.
• Authorization and customer account features fell short of expectations, leading us to develop these functionalities from the ground up.
• A significant development effort was also directed towards creating CMS landing pages, as well as brand, promotion, and portal pages from the Magento Admin panel.

What integrations with third-party systems we’ve done:

• Multisearch (search)
• Esputnik (push notifications, events, mailing)
• OWOX (tracking system, web analytics)
• GTM
• CPA Marketing - Admitad, SellAction
• Novapay, Wayforpay (payment)
• Nova Poshta, MeestExpress, UkrPoshta (shipping carriers)
• Authorization via internal eva.ua processing

What problems were solved by PWA?

• PWA added more flexibility by deconstructing the monolithic architecture into smaller components, such as the frontend, API, ElasticSearch, and backend (service structure), enhancing system modularity and scalability.
• Enabled deployment of the frontend without requiring downtime for maintenance, allowing for independent updates and enhancements.
• ElasticSearch integration facilitated easier, faster, and more flexible data interactions, especially with product attributes, improving user experience with features like displaying product characteristics on hover.
• Introduced the ability to work in offline mode, increasing accessibility and usability for users without consistent internet access.
• Improved the filter operation to be faster and more flexible, streamlining the product search and selection process for users.
• Enhanced the overall performance of the website, allowing users to navigate through pages seamlessly without reloading, contributing to a smoother and more engaging online experience.
• Standardized the codebase, making it more uniform and increasing code reusability across different parts of the application, which simplified development and maintenance.
• Streamlined the development process, lowering the barrier to entry for new developers and resulting in cleaner, more maintainable code.

Summary

A massive overhaul of the project architecture and a comprehensive scope of work on the server side have rendered this solution remarkable. The diligent efforts applied to all main pages, including the homepage, listings, shopping cart, checkout, search page, and personal account, have significantly elevated the overall user experience.

As a result, eva.ua now possesses a robust, future-proof frontend solution capable of swiftly launching new features to the market. This adaptability ensures an enhanced user experience, meets all customer expectations, and continuously aligns with the client's evolving demands.