From a 4.8-second Shopify theme to a sub-1-second headless storefront.
We rebuilt Vasansi's storefront on a headless Next.js architecture — keeping the same Shopify backend, but cutting the initial HTML payload by 100× and the load time to under a second.
Same products. Same Shopify backend. A completely different storefront.
Initial HTML payload and load times measured live. Performance scores are representative of the theme-vs-headless gap.
Same brand. Two architectures.
The challenge
Vasansi's store on vasansi.com ran on a Shopify theme that had grown heavy over time. The homepage alone shipped over 312 KB of HTML before a single image or script loaded, pushing cold load times toward 5 seconds on slower connections.
Beyond speed, the theme boxed in the brand's design ambitions and made every new feature a fight against template limits and stacked apps.
What we built
We rebuilt the storefront as a headless Next.js application on vasansi.net, connected to the same Shopify backend through the Storefront API. The Shopify admin, checkout, inventory, and payments all stayed exactly as they were — only the customer-facing layer changed.
- Server-light architecture — initial HTML down from 312 KB to ~3 KB
- Per-device image optimization (AVIF/WebP), lazy loading, edge caching
- A custom storefront built for the brand, free of theme constraints
- Code-split, sub-second interactive experience on mobile
The result
A storefront that loads in under a second, looks exactly like the brand wants it to, and runs on an architecture built for sale-day traffic — with no theme ceiling to hit next season.
The same catalog, the same Shopify backend — but a storefront that finally moves as fast as the brand does.
Want results like this for your store?
Start with a free audit — we'll show you exactly where your Shopify store is losing speed and conversions.