Higher Education

Emory University - AAE

A full rebuild of a university website paired with a migration of its e-commerce system to Shopify. The goal was to eliminate outdated workflows, improve performance, and unify content and commerce into a seamless user experience.

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Case Study

Challenge

I inherited a templated website built on an outdated Drupal 9 architecture that combined both content and e-commerce into a single system. The site suffered from significant performance issues, slow load times, and lacked scalability. Although React had been layered in to improve speed, the underlying structure wasn’t designed to support modern performance or growth.

Solution

Decoupling & Rebuild

To stabilize and modernize the platform, I led a foundational restructuring:

  • Separated e-commerce from the main website, migrating all transactional functionality to Shopify
  • Rebuilt the website on Drupal 11, establishing a scalable, future-ready CMS
  • Redesigned the content architecture, introducing structured content types such as Person, Event, Article, Trip, and Vlog
  • Implemented lazy loading across all media, significantly improving perceived performance
  • Removed unnecessary complexity, eliminating reliance on React for performance fixes and instead solving issues at the architectural level

Success

Impact

By decoupling the systems and rebuilding with a focus on scalability and performance, the platform transformed from a slow, rigid experience into a fast, maintainable ecosystem. The marketing site became more flexible and content-driven, while the e-commerce experience gained reliability and performance through Shopify.

This separation allowed each platform to excel in its role—resulting in a cleaner user experience, faster load times, and a foundation built for long-term growth.