Performant Website for Performance Ski Boots

ZipFit is the leading manufacturer of ski boot liners helping thousands with comfortable and complete connections to their skis.

Previously ZipFit website was built with WordPress and Woocommerce. It was not performing well, and when looking for a way to enhance performance issues, it turned out to be more expensive to improve the setup than to move to a new stack.

Furthermore, improving would not keep them from potential code bloat and plugin/core WordPress compatibility issues. One of the most significant downsides of using WordPress is that whatever WP setup you have, it requires constant maintenance. And so do the plugins you use. That means you are bound to tackle compatibility issues and security flaws on both ends.

Why invest in old technology? Crystallize ticked off all the boxes on being the future platform needed. - Martin Ericson, Co-Owner at ZCO STOCKHOLM AB

Fortunately for us, ZipFit had learned about Crystallize and its possibilities while researching the industry. They wanted to invest in future tech rather than spend money on old technology. Fortunately for them, they stumbled into ZCO, a company founded in 2019 with the simple goal of utilizing modern technology to make fast and usable eCommerce sites. And one of our partners specialized in bringing the best out of Next.js and Crystallize tech stack.

There was a ready design, and the ZCO team adapted it to use the Crystallize item relations, creating storytelling combining content and commerce. They also added a fit quiz where the customer fills in a set of details, and then it returns the recommended ski boot liner for them. For this, they have over 15 thousand possible combinations making sure that it’s the right recommendation.

The site serves everywhere there are skiers. This means elaborate accounting integrations as well as tax settings per country and region. Utilizing hosting with Vercel also allows the site to be fast, regardless of where the visitor comes from.

They also have Stripe as payment now to provide the relevant payment options on the country level.

Building a content-rich site has its challenges, and the Figma file from Crystallize helps a lot when doing content modeling. It’s easy to see what content type you need to create and how to link those together. The result is a clear content space where information can be reusable.

The backend is Crystallize all the way. Javascript for the integrations and Next.js. Crystallize serves as the eCommerce and CMS engine, and the integrations between systems are built separately with JavaScript (for Accounting, CS tools, Warehouses, marketing tools, and review tools). For hosting, ZipFit is set on Vercel. The ZCO team built static pages that revalidate when something is changed in Crystallize (product, cms block, inventory, etc.), i.e., practice static with OnDemand revalidation on changed URLs.

We also built fit-quiz based on the extensive knowledge of the ZipFit team. The tech stack behind that app is Subabase. More than 15 thousand combinations ensure the customer gets the exact recommendation for their feet and liners.

Finally, this project's main challenges were integrating Xero and the Colorado-specific tax. We spent time understanding how to be compliant with accounting and tax collections.

The result speaks for themselves. ZipFit has a feature-rich and fast site that also automates loads of tasks allowing them to spend time driving the business rather than worry about the tech backing them up.

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