A monolithic WooCommerce store that crashed on product drops, rebuilt as a headless Next.js stack that handled 2,400 concurrent visitors without an error.
"Kinetic's product drops were crashing their WooCommerce store — 14-second load times, abandoned checkouts. We rebuilt on headless WordPress with a Next.js frontend. The next product drop hit 2,400 concurrent visitors without a single server error."
Kinetic releases limited-edition running gear in product drops — high-traffic spikes that repeatedly crashed their monolithic WooCommerce store. Load times under traffic hit 14 seconds. Customers abandoned checkouts. The store's WordPress theme was 180,000 lines of CSS. An e-commerce store that can't handle demand is a lost-revenue problem, not a technical curiosity.
We rebuilt Kinetic on a headless WordPress stack: Next.js frontend, WooCommerce as the commerce backend via the REST API, Vercel for edge delivery. Marketing pages and product catalogues are statically generated at the CDN edge — only the checkout hits live WooCommerce. Under a product drop, 95% of traffic is handled without touching the WooCommerce server. The custom storefront matched Kinetic's performance-gear aesthetic: fast, stripped-back, typeface-led.
Their next product drop — 2,400 concurrent visitors at peak — completed without a single server error. The static Next.js frontend loads in under 1 second on 4G. Kinetic's founder described it as 'the first drop we've had where we didn't lose sales because the site went down.'
Client reviews
"They rebuilt our site in four weeks and we were ranking on page one within the month. It is the best commercial decision we made this year."
"Our old WordPress site was slow, invisible in search and frankly embarrassing. They fixed all of it — we are faster, ranking better and finally winning the right clients."
"WooCommerce, SEO and hosting all managed in one place — it changed how we operate. Sales are up 40% since launch and we have not looked back."
"Our site converts better than anything our competitors are running. They built it around our actual customers — not a template."