GSF Car Parts, a leading auto parts retailer in the UK, was being held back by a five-year-old, monolithic eCommerce platform that frustrated customers with 15-second checkouts, couldn’t keep stock and pricing current, and made every product update a multi-hour ordeal. GSF partnered with Net Solutions to rebuild the platform as a headless commerce ecosystem: a React storefront on Adobe Commerce Cloud, Contentful for content management, and a re-engineered search, fulfilment, and data layer underneath.
The results reached far beyond the checkout page. Checkout time dropped from 15s to under 4 seconds for 1,200+ concurrent users. Product import cycles that used to take 16 hours now take 17 minutes. Stock refreshes moved to 4 – 6 times a day with real-time validation at checkout. And with search, bundling, and fulfillment improvements compounding, GSF now processes 6,000–7,000 orders a day, twice as many since the overhaul with a 20% increase in average order value.
“We’ve had the privilege of working with Net Solutions for our IT development needs, and we couldn’t be more satisfied with their exceptional service and expertise. From day one, Net Solutions has demonstrated a deep understanding of our business goals and has provided innovative, tailored solutions that have truly transformed our eComm architecture.
We highly recommend Net Solutions to any business looking for a professional, innovative, and trustworthy IT development team. They have been instrumental in our success, and we look forward to continuing our collaboration for many years to come!”
Revenue growth after the overhaul
Average Order Value increased
Average Order Volume increased
Concurrent users at Peak load periods
Imagine running a popular online store where every checkout takes up to 15 seconds, and roughly 150 customers are stuck waiting at any given moment. That was GSF’s reality. Their old, monolithic platform was slow and inflexible, and it was holding back both user experience and sales.
Site speed was unacceptable; shoppers often waited up to 15 seconds for checkout, causing frustration and drop-offs.
Any system update or product import took ages. A full product import ran to roughly 16 hours (and often required multiple retries), which slowed down the business. Due to the time consuming updates, the stock and price updates ran only 4 times a day, often leading to inaccurate stock levels, high returns, and cancellations.
Connecting the site to new tools or partners was cumbersome. The outdated architecture made integrations a persistent source of friction.
The old CMS was clunky and limited. Marketing teams couldn’t easily update content or launch campaigns, making the site feel stale.
Search was a navigation tool, not a demand-capture engine fitment-specific and long-tail queries frequently came back empty, pushing shoppers to abandon rather than browse.
The website’s look and feel were dated and unintuitive, leading to poor customer engagement and lost sales.
It was clear that GSF needed a comprehensive digital overhaul to overcome these issues and unleash its growth potential.
Net Solutions collaborated closely with GSF to plan a step-by-step transformation that would modernize the platform without disrupting ongoing business. We started with a thorough audit of GSF’s technology and pain points, then moved GSF from a monolithic architecture to a headless commerce ecosystem, a React frontend decoupled from an Adobe Commerce Cloud backend. The approach was proactive and transparent: update every critical layer (commerce, content, search, fulfilment, and infrastructure) in iterations, test along the way, and keep GSF’s team involved at each stage. This phased strategy meant GSF experienced continuous improvement rather than a risky “big bang” switch.
To bring GSF’s digital presence up to speed, we implemented a suite of modern technologies and best practices:
We rebuilt GSF’s storefront as a headless commerce ecosystem: a React frontend decoupled from Adobe Commerce Cloud on the backend, packed with AI-driven product recommendations and advanced analytics. The new platform is global-ready with multi-currency and multi-language support out of the box, positioning GSF for easy expansion into new markets.
To fix the content bottleneck, we integrated Contentful as a headless content management system. This freed GSF’s content team to create, edit, and publish site content instantly without developer reliance. From dynamic homepage banners to engaging product stories, content updates became seamless and frequent.
Through Adobe Live Search, we introduced compatibility-based search (make/model/variant) to guarantee precise, vehicle-specific results, successfully handling fuzzy terms and partial SKUs. We engineered three backend interfaces in Adobe Commerce to reconcile TecDoc/AutoGuru data, built automated API alerting to flag empty payloads or dropouts to IT instantly.
To resolve last-mile friction, we integrated DPD Ship2Shop for heavy items, added locker-based collection and expanded dropshipping, and rewrote routing logic to pull from Regional/National Distribution Centres (RDC/NDC) with real-time validation. We introduced Pay Online, Collect in Store (POCI) and maximized local branch utility by offering time-sensitive Same Day Delivery. Stock refresh frequency was increased from 4 to 6 times daily to provide far more accurate inventory availability.
We gave the website a complete UI/UX makeover: clean, mobile-responsive, and intuitive to navigate. We designed contextual “Repair Kits” (e.g., a 60k-Mile Service Kit) with a frontend stepper validation that disables the “Add to Basket” button until every component is 100% compatible with the customer’s vehicle. We added an instant “Buy Now” checkout, expanded the payment ecosystem to include Credit Card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, ClearPay and Klarna, built direct Bosch deeplink routing for partner traffic, and layered in real-time social proof overlays (e.g., “Trending”) to drive urgency.
Product enrichment workflows were optimized through Akeneo PIM, enabling faster synchronization of enriched product attributes, improved catalog consistency, and accelerated publication of sellable products.
To combat churn and protect margins, we launched an exclusive Reward Points program featuring automated lifecycle emails, strict basket minimums, and shipping exclusions managed via precise admin controls.
We set up automated CI/CD pipelines so new features, security patches, and design tweaks roll out continuously with minimal downtime. Alongside this, we strengthened observability across the platform: real-time monitoring of order volumes, checkout, and API health enables proactive detection of anomalies — including faster recovery after production incidents — rather than waiting on business escalations.
Together, these components formed a flexible, future-proof digital platform for GSF Car Parts — one built to deliver a fast, personalized shopping experience and adapt easily to the company’s growth.
After implementing these solutions, GSF Car Parts saw measurable improvement across every stage of the commerce lifecycle — not just at checkout.
Checkout time dropped from ~15 seconds to 3–4 seconds on average. The platform now comfortably handles 1,200+ concurrent users with no slow-down, ensuring customers no longer abandon their carts out of impatience.
Following the Adobe Live Search rollout, unique searches increased by roughly 27% with 1 million+ unique searches per month, and the zero-result rate fell sharply, a reduction of roughly 66% from its prior level of 2.16% to 0.73%, meaning far fewer shoppers hit a dead end on a fitment or long-tail query. Search became a strong contributor to completed purchases with an increased search based conversion rate from 0.19% to 5.97% and helped achieve an average click position of 1.73, indicating that customers typically find relevant products within the first few search results. Broader, richer result sets mean more shoppers now browse and compare before buying, which shows up as increased search exploration rather than a simple click-through gain.
Checkout performance improved from ~15 seconds to under 4 seconds on an average despite the fact that Gift cards, loyalty points, social proofing, and product recommendations are added per product on the cart.
The product import cycle shrank from roughly 16 hours to 17 minutes, and stabilized Akeneo integrations mean product attributes sync reliably. In practical terms, GSF can add new inventory or update pricing in a fraction of the time it used to take, keeping the online store fresh and saving significant IT effort.
All systems (inventory, sales, CRM, etc.) are now integrated on a unified platform. The data flows effortlessly without the sync errors that plagued the old setup. GSF’s online and offline stock counts match closely, with minimal discrepancies even during peak sales, a huge win for operational accuracy. Increasing stock refresh to 4 -6 times daily, combined with real-time validation via NDC and RDC, has reduced failed and invalid orders and improved customers’ trust that what they see in stock is what they’ll receive.
Vehicle-specific “Repair Kit” bundles carry a meaningfully higher average order value, roughly 57% higher than a typical order and currently make up a small but growing share of total orders. Beyond the AOV lift, absolute fitment validation on bundles has also reduced returns and reverse-logistics costs.
Site-wide online conversion rate improved from 4.51% to 4.74%, helped by a faster site, an expanded payment ecosystem, and the new “Buy Now” journey. Within search specifically, conversion behavior also improved from 0.19% to 5.97% as broader result coverage gave shoppers more relevant paths to purchase.
Perhaps most impressively, GSF’s annual revenue showed an unprecedented growth of 140%, the monthly online order volume surged by 2x after the overhaul on the back of these changes.
Automated API alerting, Adobe Live Search merchant dashboards, and catalog discrepancy tracking eliminated manual guesswork. Stronger observability around checkout and API health has improved incident response including meaningfully recovering order volume in the aftermath of production incidents and reduced the risk of financial leakage from stock or pricing inconsistencies.
Between 2024 and 2026, GSF’s customer mix has shifted in ways that point to healthier, more durable growth. Registered customers now account for roughly 34% of orders and 36% of revenue, up from about 26% and 25% respectively, reflecting better customer identification and engagement. The repeat customer base grew by roughly 59%, while one-time customers grew by roughly 67% both the acquisition and retention engines are working. Repeat customers still drive about 70% of total revenue and spend roughly 2.5x more per customer than one-time buyers, and home delivery has grown to around 40% of daily orders, up from about 20%. The new Reward Points program is designed to build further on this, converting more guests into registered, repeat customers.
DPD Ship2Shop, locker-based collection, expanded dropshipping, and POCI (Pay Online, Collect In Store) have given customers more ways to receive their order on their own terms, reducing friction at the fulfillment step and improving order completion rates.
GSF now has a future-proof foundation. It can absorb traffic spikes without slowdown, add new features or integrations quickly, and expand into new regions online without rebuilding the core. GSF’s digital strategy is no longer constrained by technology, it’s empowered by it.
We never deliver one-size-fits-all answers. We take the time to understand each client’s vision and business landscape, then craft a solution that fits like a glove. For GSF, we aligned every technology choice with their immediate needs and long-term growth plans.
We excel at knitting together all the moving parts of a digital ecosystem. Our team ensured GSF’s new platform integrated smoothly with their inventory, payment, and CRM systems, enhancing operations rather than disrupting them.
Technology doesn’t stand still, and neither do we. We proactively incorporate cutting-edge advancements — from AI features to modern UI trends — to keep our clients ahead of the curve. GSF’s adoption of headless architecture and AI-driven personalization is a prime example.
Our experience is international, but we respect local nuances. GSF’s platform now supports multiple currencies and languages, ready for global growth without losing the local touch that makes the business unique.
Our job isn’t done at launch. We stand by our clients with ongoing support, optimization, and strategic input — GSF continues to benefit from our post-launch monitoring and improvements.
GSF Car Parts’ renaissance in eCommerce is just one example of what the right technology and partner can achieve. Ready to create your own success story? Let’s talk about crafting a custom digital solution for your business — faster websites, happier customers, and higher revenue. Reach out to us today, and let’s start planning your business’s digital transformation.
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