A New Chapter: One of Shopify's Largest & Most Complex Stores | Shopify Plus Partner & Shopify Agency, Leeds
World of Books

World of Books

A New Chapter: One of Shopify's Largest & Most Complex Stores

Background

World of Books partnered with Onstate to migrate their expansive e-commerce operation from a headless legacy tech stack to Shopify Plus. This involved moving over 7 million products across 7 markets, 3 languages, and 5 currencies. Working closely together, we not only handled the challenges of scale but also designed a global solution, in one of Shopify Markets' largest and most wide-ranging implementations to date. Post-launch, we equipped their team to take the reins confidently, ensuring they had the skills and control needed to drive their success forward.

Brief

To replatform World of Books to Shopify Plus, utilising Shopify Markets for a seamless multi-market, multi-language, and multi-currency solution within a single domain to serve a global audience. Develop a custom theme powered by a design system, supporting complex fulfilment rules and extended discount functionality for region-specific offers. Ensure smooth migration of 7 million products, including SEO management. Integrate Tapcart for a dedicated mobile app, enhancing mobile user experience and engagement.

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Services

  • Stakeholder engagement
  • Solution design
  • UX design / Design system
  • Build
  • Integration
  • Custom app development
  • Data migration

Key features

  • Shopify Markets: Multi-currency & multi-language
  • Multi-entity payments
  • Market and variant-level promotions via Shopify Functions
  • Bespoke Algolia search integration
  • Performance optimisation
  • Custom GTM & GA4 setup via Shopify Pixels
  • Tapcart mobile app integration

A new chapter for World of Books

A Solution Designed to Scale

We designed a tailored Shopify solution to support World of Books' vast catalogue, comprising millions of products and categories. The store represents one of the largest Shopify Markets implementations to date, all running from a single domain. The data model was developed to allow for efficient, large-scale management, enabling millions of price updates every day with minimal disruption. Our custom integration of Algolia delivers split-second search and filtering, giving users rapid access to the right products within this extensive catalogue. This solution ensured that World of Books could maintain exceptional performance, even at massive scale.

Laying down a design language using the Atomic Design methodology

Internationalisation

Leveraging Shopify Markets, we rolled out multi-currency and multi-language functionality across 7 global markets, giving World of Books a unified brand presence while catering to the specific needs of each region. This setup enables smooth global operations, balancing consistency with local adaptability – perfect for their growing global customer base. The store is also one of the very first to utilise Shopify Payments' multi-entity settlement: allowing World of Books to settle directly into their local bank accounts.

Custom Promotions

Using Shopify Functions, we developed a custom promotions system designed for the complexities of World of Books’ business model. The system allows for market-specific offers and variant-level targeting, ensuring promotions are always relevant, precise, and aligned with the intricacies of their pricing structures.

Algolia Search Integration

With millions of products spanning multiple markets, we integrated Algolia’s powerful search capabilities into 7 custom indexes, tailored specifically for each region. Our custom UI and index design enable customers to find exactly what they need, quickly and accurately, no matter where they are in the world.

SEO Migration & Performance Optimisation

We managed a full SEO migration, including a domain switch, safeguarding World of Books’ search rankings and organic traffic. Simultaneously, we optimised the platform for Core Web Vitals (CWV), dramatically improving load times and mobile responsiveness across all markets, ensuring both top-tier performance and SEO best practices.

UX Design & Global Design System

To deliver a consistent yet localised user experience, we developed a global design system that standardised UX across all regions. This design system maintained brand consistency while allowing for local customisations, ensuring that WoB’s diverse audience enjoyed a seamless shopping experience, regardless of their location.

We had two main objectives for this replatform - to reduce our Total Cost of Ownership and to empower the World of Books team to take control of the platform so that we could rapidly build more engaging customer experiences for book lovers. Onstate quickly became a vital extension to our product team, and were instrumental not only in the site development and implementation, but also in upskilling and familiarising our team with the Shopify platform and wider ecosystem.
David Magee - Product Director - World of Books

David Magee
Product Director - World of Books

Right from the outset, our objective was to empower WoB to own their destiny. Onstate’s approach focused on equipping the WoB team with the tools and knowledge needed to confidently manage their Shopify Plus platform. Through a collaborative transition process, we helped build their in-house expertise, enabling them to take control of daily operations and adapt the store to meet evolving business needs. This empowerment set WoB up for long-term success, allowing them to stay agile and responsive as their business grows.
Chris Marshall - Ecommerce Director - Onstate

Chris Marshall
Ecommerce Director - Onstate

Pushing the Boundaries with Shopify

A project of this scale required more than just out-of-the-box solutions. We worked hand-in-hand with Shopify’s own engineering team, leveraging our close relationship to enhance and extend their existing solutions. This partnership allowed us to push the platform’s boundaries, developing custom features and integrations that delivered a truly groundbreaking solution for World of Books.

Proof of the pudding?

The new store is faster and converts better than the previous headless one.

Products migrated

>7m

Currencies

5

Markets

7

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