Case Study: RafRaf – Powering Saudi Arabia’s Auto Parts eCommerce with Headless Commerce

RafRaf, a leading online auto parts retailer in Saudi Arabia, was facing serious hurdles with its digital store. Whenever the server went down, the entire website—including both the shopping frontend and the Magento backend—became unavailable. This caused frustrating interruptions for customers and lost sales opportunities. The platform was also slow, difficult to manage, and not ready to support the business’s growing customer base.

Challenges

RafRaf’s eCommerce setup struggled with multiple issues that limited growth:

Full downtime during server crashes: even simple outages made the store completely unavailable.
Slow page load speeds: customers had to wait, leading to poor shopping experiences.
Heavy server loads: traffic surges created instability and frequent performance drops.
Uncontrolled storage growth: constant increases in storage usage added to inefficiency.
Risky deployments: every time changes were rolled out, the live site could crash.

For an ambitious retailer competing in Saudi Arabia’s fast-growing digital auto parts market, these issues made it difficult to scale and build customer trust.

Solution

To fix these challenges, AALogics introduced Headless Commerce architecture. The idea was to separate RafRaf’s Magento backend from its React frontend, giving each side the freedom to operate independently. The new frontend was deployed on Vercel, a modern hosting platform built for speed, security, and scalability.
With this transformation, RafRaf’s online store became faster, more reliable, and ready to handle future growth in the GCC region’s competitive auto parts eCommerce industry.

Our Approach

Design: Redesigned the frontend to be lightweight, responsive, and mobile-first.

Development: Deployed the React frontend on Vercel with one-click rollouts.

Integration: Integrated Magento backend with the frontend using GraphQL APIs, ensuring faster data delivery and reducing unnecessary server strain.

Go Live: Conducted detailed testing to eliminate risks before launch.

Features Developed

Headless Commerce Architecture: Frontend and backend separated for stability and scalability.
GraphQL Integration: Real-time, optimized data transfer between Magento and React.
Vercel Deployment: One-click scaling, fail-safe builds, and instant rollbacks.
Performance Enhancements: Faster site speed, optimized images, and serverless functions.
Stable Live Environment: Updates no longer risked breaking the live site.