Case study
Legacy ecommerce rebuild & ChiliSleep rebrand
Faster storefront, full rebrand, and SEO-safe migration on Shopify Plus
ChiliSleep (Sleepme Inc.)
- Ecommerce
- Rebrand
- SEO
- Shopify
- Vue
Summary
Role
Digital Product Lead
Timeline
Rebrand and rebuild (under five months)
Team
Founders, design, engineering, architecture, hardware, mobile, marketing, SEO, care, B2B, sales, affiliates, packaging, and specialist vendors.
Domain
DTC sleep hardware and software; full brand migration.
Metrics moved
Shipped on time; search visibility recovered and improved after launch.
Key constraints
SEO and URL risk; affiliate and packaging coordination; mobile performance and legacy debt.
Systems involved
Shopify Plus + Vue storefront; RN aligned to web; technical SEO with agency; analytics instrumentation.
Stack
Tech stack
DTC on Shopify primitives + Vue; mobile alignment; disciplined SEO migration.
Storefront
- Vue.js
- Mobile-first templates
- Performance & IA refactor
Commerce
- Shopify Plus
- Theme-level SEO structure
- Checkout & catalog primitives
Mobile
- React Native
- Parity with web claims & purchase context
Growth & migration
- Technical SEO program
- Redirect & parity QA
- Analytics instrumentation
How the five-month cutover stayed shippable
Measurement first, migration artifacts with UX, one brand story across web and packaging.
Baseline the money templates
Rank templates by revenue and crawl signal—fix what pays for the program first.
Redirect and parity as release work
Meaningful template changes ship with canonicals, redirect maps, parity checks—not a post-launch SEO ticket.
Vue on Shopify Plus primitives
Checkout/catalog truth in platform primitives; team earns speed on a disciplined presentation layer.
React Native stayed credible
Device flows and product claims matched ChiliSleep the day domains flipped.
Affiliates and packaging in the same rhythm
Weekly cut lines kept eng, marketing, and partners on one calendar.
Line of sight to connected web
Vue + Shopify + aligned RN enabled later Sleep.me dashboard without redoing commerce from scratch.
Overview
Led ChiliSleep redesign, technical SEO, and company-wide rebrand from ChiliTechnology to ChiliSleep—before Sleep.me headless. Cross-functional on a tight calendar. Replaced a four-year-old stack hurting search and mobile with Shopify Plus + Vue; kept RN consistent with the new site. Owned analytics/growth strategy, SEO agency relationship, and buy-vs-build with eng/architecture. Rankings, crawl health, and conversion drove sequencing. Same foundation later supported Sleep.me logged-in metrics and ML summaries—scoped model work, not a generic assistant.
Business context
ChiliSleep lived on organic and performance marketing; declining technical/UX baseline was revenue risk. Leadership needed faster iteration and a clean brand transition without handing competitors an SEO window.
Problem
Four years of UX debt, slow uneven mobile, weakening search vs intent. Simultaneous rebrand added URL, content, affiliate, and packaging coordination—had to land as one customer-visible story.
Constraints
Under five months end to end; low tolerance for ranking collapse; parallel web, campaigns, affiliates, and physical packaging. Eng had to lift performance while marketing refreshed voice under deadline.
Role & ownership
Digital Product Lead: discovery, prioritization, acceptance, exec-ready comms. Owned analytics/growth roadmap (instrument, test, tie releases to acquisition/conversion) and cutover plan. Translated SEO findings into sequenced roadmap: crawl/performance foundation → high-value templates → long-tail parity. Vendor management for SEO agency: scopes, timelines, acceptance—redirect maps, metadata rules, QA checklists, not slide advice. With eng/architecture: buy-vs-build for storefront patterns given calendar and maintenance.
Goals & metrics
Faster, clearer storefront on schedule; preserve/improve search through rebrand; lift conversion via nav, PDP proof, and purchase paths; RN and web aligned for hardware buyers.
Approach
Measurement first: where rankings, crawl errors, and engagement dropped; which templates carried revenue. Major UX changes paired with migration artifacts (redirects, canonicals, parity). High-fidelity responsive mockups as the contract for design, eng, and marketing before heavy build.
Decisions & tradeoffs
Early investment in technical SEO + agency (“buy” migration expertise; eng owned execution). Shopify Plus + Vue with architecture vs custom commerce that could not fit five months. Sequenced performance and migration safety before experimental interaction. Favored platform primitives and disciplined Vue over bespoke commerce logic in the rebrand window.
Cross-functional leadership
Weekly alignment across founders, design, eng, architecture, hardware, mobile, marketing, SEO, care, B2B, sales, affiliates—with explicit launch cut lines; vendor milestones in the same rhythm. Affiliates and packaging flipped with the site. Screen recordings of critical journeys for async stakeholder review.
Execution
Vue on Shopify Plus: mobile responsiveness, page weight, template-level SEO (metadata, internal linking, crawl-friendly components). ChiliTechnology→ChiliSleep across site, campaigns, partners; RN messaging aligned where device setup had to match web. Cutover checklists, monitoring, rollback options on high-risk routes.
Outcomes
Launched inside five months. Search recovered/improved vs pre-migration baselines; credible foundation for Sleep.me and later owner-only web experiences without a greenfield commerce rewrite.
What changed
Coherent ChiliSleep brand, faster pages, clearer purchase paths; modern baseline for merchandising and campaigns vs legacy fights. De-risked later headless marketplace by proving large commerce cutovers with SEO discipline. Web/app continuity for later authenticated dashboard.
Lessons learned
Rebrand + replatform fails when SEO is treated as copy-only—it is release management. Mockups earn their keep when they encode responsive behavior and SEO structure, not only polish. Compressed timelines: a screen recording + shared checklist often beats everyone in the same staging slot daily.