Crossing Minds
Developing a public Shopify app for smart recommendations that increase salesAffiliate Tracking App
Building a public Shopify app that allows store owners to monitor affiliates' performance and track conversions.
Performance and DevOps optimizations for high-volume affiliate tracking
Location | Tel Aviv, Israel | Cooperation model | |
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Industry | Affiliate Marketing | Partnership period | Summer 2020 - now |
Improvements plan | Discovery phase, requirements and estimation analysis, prototyping and designing, MVP release, maintenance | Team size | CTO, Senior Fullstack Engineer, Middle Fullstack Engineer, DevOps Engineer |
Technologies |
About the client
Our client is a leading global affiliate network, leveraging over 15 years of experience connecting affiliates and advertisers through high-performing marketing campaigns. Their team combines diverse expertise to offer advanced tracking technology, personalized insights, and data-driven insights. The client’s network supports a wide range of CBD brands and products, focusing on driving growth and maximizing performance across the industry. From day one, they’ve been on a mission: help stores increase conversions and grow their earnings with extended brand reach.
About the product
This affiliate marketing platform allows store owners to seamlessly track customer conversions via influencer tracking links. Compatible with Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Magento, it offers streamlined tracking, real-time analytics, and a user-friendly dashboard, so it has quickly become trendy among store owners. The solution provides robust tools for affiliate management, detailed performance metrics, and customizable reports to empower merchants to expand brand visibility globally. DigitalSuits joined the project to support its rapid scaling and help handle its growth.
Challenge Overview
As the business needs to scale up quickly, the core tasks were to maintain the system, implement new plugins for different ecommerce platforms, and add a security layer to encrypt sensitive data. Secondly, we needed to provide long-term DevOps support and maintenance to keep the application working smoothly. Our client faced a few challenges:
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Scaling issues: The system needed to handle more users and keep performance high as the load increased.
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Security concerns: We had to improve security to protect sensitive data. We added extra layers of encryption to keep user information safe.
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DevOps support: The business needed a trusted partner for ongoing support to keep everything running smoothly.
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Handling more traffic: The Shopify app had to handle more visitors and stay up-to-date with the latest ecommerce updates (like Shopify API changes).
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Real-time analytics: The app needed to provide live data for store owners.
Our solution
To address the challenges, we started by developing an infrastructure diagram to clarify the relationships between apps by using DevOps best practices.
Here’s how we built a foundation ready to scale globally:
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Security: We added a new security layer to protect sensitive data and ensure that only authorized users have access.
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System optimization: The DigitalSuits dedicated team improved the system to handle up to 5 million requests per hour (up from 1 million).
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Database and infrastructure upgrade: We upgraded the database and infrastructure to help the system grow smoothly.
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Elasticsearch: Our experts integrated Elasticsearch to enhance search performance and data retrieval speed.
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Kafka integration: We implemented Kafka to increase system capacity and handle higher traffic loads, improving throughput and reliability.
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Ecommerce integration: DigitaSuits full stack developers added new ecommerce integrations and updated APIs to keep up with Shopify changes.
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DevOps and maintenance: We provide ongoing DevOps support to keep the system running well and up to date.
Result
We successfully completed all the project tasks and built a strong, lasting relationship with our client. We needed to meet the high expectations, and our solution met their business needs.
Key outcomes include:
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New architecture solution: We used industry best practices to optimize the software architecture.
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Increased traffic: We integrated the Kafka data handling platform to handle higher traffic loads, supporting up to 5 million requests per hour.
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Enhanced security: With a new security layer, the system protects sensitive data and raises the overall security level.
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Optimized performance: With Elasticsearch and Kafka, we improved search speed, data retrieval, and system capacity.
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Compatibility with the latest Shopify changes: We successfully updated the app to ensure compatibility with the latest Shopify standards.
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DevOps upgrades: We implemented DevOps best practices, ensuring a seamless product development lifecycle and continuous system improvements.
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High-quality maintenance: We deliver continuous support to ensure the system operates efficiently and without interruptions.
The client’s affiliate tracking platform now handles higher traffic loads, offers better performance, and provides a more secure experience. They can now scale their operations efficiently while delivering an enhanced service to their users.