How We Rebuilt the Digital Core of a Home Improvement Giant

The Market

Post-COVID, resilient retailers thrived by embracing digital transformation early. One major home improvement retailer in Romania took this step back in 2019, launching an e-commerce platform at a time when in-store shopping still prevailed.

Then came the pandemic. Lockdowns sparked a surge in DIY interest, significantly boosting demand for online shopping. The retailer’s Romanian website experienced a traffic increase of over 90% from 2019 to 2020, with 2021 exceeding 2020 by an additional four million visits. Their e-commerce conversion rate also rose by 50%.

But their website struggled under the surge, facing major performance challenges.

The Challenge

To keep pace with growing customer expectations and rapid digital evolution, the retailer urgently needed a robust e-commerce platform, capable of handling high traffic volumes, frequent transactions, sudden demand spikes, and secure payment processing. More than just a support channel, their online store needed to operate as a full-scale digital storefront.

However, their existing IT provider couldn’t keep up with this vision. Instead of addressing core problems, they implemented a series of short-term patches, accumulating technical debt that left the platform unstable, unscalable, and increasingly incapable of supporting business growth or delivering a compelling customer experience.

The complexity of the organization added further pressure. The international group behind the retailer spanned multiple departments, technologies, systems, and product owners across various European sites. Any digital transformation partner would need to deliver a technically sound solution while collaborating seamlessly with this diverse stakeholder landscape.

Three critical priorities stood out:

1. Stabilizing and scaling operations: Frequent downtimes and sluggish login performance made the platform unreliable, limiting its ability to support business-critical activities. The retailer needed a highly available, scalable system that could perform under pressure.

2. Enhancing the customer experience: Key improvements were needed across the customer journey, especially in search, checkout, and account creation. The new platform had to support advanced features like location-based searches, seamless discount code application, real-time stock visibility, and a faster, more intuitive “add to cart” flow.

3. Regaining full control over the platform: The existing setup lacked transparency. Incident tracking was inconsistent, infrastructure monitoring was handled externally, and campaign updates required manual intervention. The business needed more autonomy and agility to respond to market needs.

Compounding these challenges, the retailer’s platform, including the website and order management systems, was hosted on physical servers located in Paris and Frankfurt. This legacy infrastructure posed multiple risks:

• Fixed capacity led to performance issues during peak demand, with limited ability to scale.

• Complex networking relied heavily on VPNs, increasing operational burden and security risk.

• Single points of failure made the system vulnerable to outages.

• High maintenance overhead diverted resources from innovation to routine upkeep.

• Outdated software introduced security risks and compatibility limitations.

The need for a modern, scalable, cloud-native solution had become urgent—and transformative action was the only way forward.

The Solution

E-commerce platform revamp

Zitec essentially became the extended development and project arm of the retailer’s e-commerce and digital product teams. 

The teams involved assumed shared ownership for key technical aspects that included, but not limited to:

This flexibility helped remove some of the major hurdles that hindered the ramp-up of the project over six months, such as:

Infrastructure modernization and cloud migration

In order to address limitations in scalability, reliability, and maintainability, paving the way for improved performance, cost-efficiency, and enhanced customer experience, the retailer initiated a migration to Google Cloud. This involved transitioning all online systems to Google’s robust, scalable, and managed cloud infrastructure.

Key benefits of moving to Google Cloud:

• Scalability and Flexibility: Google Cloud’s dynamic resource allocation allows for seamless handling of fluctuating traffic volumes.

• Enhanced Network Performance: Google Cloud’s secure and high-performance network infrastructure improves system responsiveness and security.

• Increased Reliability and Redundancy: Google Cloud’s redundancy features eliminate single points of failure, ensuring high availability.

• Reduced Maintenance: Google Cloud’s managed services reduce the burden of manual infrastructure management, freeing up valuable resources.

• Modernization: The migration involved updating software to the latest versions and adopting modern practices like containerization for improved efficiency.

The Google Cloud migration yielded significant business benefits:

• Improved Website Performance: Faster loading times and increased capacity to handle high traffic volumes enhance customer experience.

• Enhanced System Reliability: Increased system stability minimizes disruptions and ensures continuous service availability.

• Cost Optimization: Reduced infrastructure maintenance costs contribute to operational efficiency.

• Simplified Management: Easier system management and updates allow teams to focus on strategic initiatives.

• Strengthened Security: Google Cloud’s robust security measures protect sensitive customer data.

• Scalability for Growth: The platform can easily scale to support future business growth.

The migration followed a phased approach:

1. Development Environment: Setting up and testing the systems in a Google Cloud development environment.

2. Production Environment: Migrating the systems to the live Google Cloud production environment.

Each system component was migrated individually to minimize risk.

Potential challenges, including software updates, system compatibility, and team coordination, were proactively addressed to ensure a smooth migration.

The Results

Today, the retailer’s e-commerce revenues in Romania make up 10% of its national sales. The company attributes the successful pivot to a transformation that was anchored in the vision of delivering better customer experience.

For instance, the account creation and checkout process are twice more efficient with improved UI, whether they use the mobile app or website. Faster page loads with updated product information are delivering more effective queries and searches, translating into more orders. Stable uptime of over 99.9% has also meant a more seamless buying experience. Most importantly, customers now have a unified cart from which to manage their purchase journey and delivery options whether they are shopping online or offline, radically lowering instances of cart abandonment.