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Universal Standard reduced latency, increased revenue, and improved the user experience by migrating to a modern ecommerce architecture from AWS Retail Competency Partner Layer0. The small retail company wanted to improve its website performance but had limited control over its monolithic server-based architecture. Universal Standard chose to migrate to a serverless architecture from Layer0, powered by multiple AWS services, including AWS Lambda and Amazon API Gateway. Using this solution, Universal Standard improved its retail performance and delivered a stronger digital experience, increasing mobile conversions by 200 percent and unlocking an 81 percent year-over-year revenue increase.

Searching for a Fast, Modern Ecommerce Architecture

Universal Standard aims to provide high-quality size-inclusive clothing through its desktop and mobile website, which it hosted on a monolithic, server-based architecture. This infrastructure contributed to high page load times that affected the customer experience, impacting the retail company’s conversion rates. To reduce latency and better meet the competitive demands of the retail industry, Universal Standard sought to modernize its website and improve the user experience with the help of Amazon Web Services (AWS) Retail Competency Partner Layer0 by Limelight. Limelight has one of the world’s largest networks. Since the implementation, Layer0 has helped Universal Standard increase revenue, reduce page load times, and unlock improvements in session duration, average order value, and mobile conversion rates.

“We could also provide high stability, scalability, and security because our solution inherits key features and compliance controls from AWS services.”

- Lauren Bradley, Content Marketing Manager, Layer0

Improving Universal Standard’s Website Experience

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in New York City, Universal Standard sells clothing in sizes 00–40. To support its website, the company relied on server-based infrastructure from its content management system. However, this solution contributed to high latency on the website, impacting the user experience. “Universal Standard needed infrastructure that could speed up development, which would help it achieve certain goals like optimizing for site speed,” says Lauren Bradley, content marketing manager at Layer0. Universal Standard also wanted to modernize its infrastructure so that it could improve the customer and developer experience.

Layer0 provides infrastructure and tooling to support websites with large databases and has used AWS services to power its solutions since 2011. As an AWS Independent Software Vendor, Layer0 has achieved the AWS Retail Competency and builds solutions designed to support retail customers as well as clients in the travel, hospitality, and financial services industries. Universal Standard engaged Layer0 to help it migrate to a higher-performing ecommerce architecture. “Universal Standard chose our solution for its speed capabilities,” says Bradley. “We could also provide high stability, scalability, and security because our solution inherits key features and compliance controls from AWS services.”

In February 2020, Layer0 began to help Universal Standard migrate from its monolithic infrastructure to a serverless architecture powered by multiple AWS services, including Amazon API Gateway, a fully managed service that makes it easy for developers to create, publish, maintain, monitor, and secure APIs at any scale.

Reducing Latency and Accelerating Development with Layer0

Layer0’s solution is powered by serverless, API-driven architecture on AWS, facilitated by Amazon API Gateway as well as AWS Lambda, a serverless, event-driven compute service that lets developers run code for virtually any type of application or backend service without provisioning or managing servers. Instead of hosting everything on a single server, this API-based architecture runs different components of Universal Standard’s website infrastructure separately, improving speed and performance. “Immediately after launching Layer0’s solution, Universal Standard’s page load times dropped from 4–7 s to about 1.5 s,” says Bradley. Now, Universal Standard can load transition pages in 600 ms and its home page in 1.5 s.

Universal Standard has also improved its development speeds using Layer0’s modern infrastructure. For example, the solution uses Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), an object storage service that offers industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance, to store media and static assets for Universal Standard. “Using Amazon S3 helps Universal Standard easily view different website deployments and perform A/B tests,” says Matt Gilbert, head of marketing at Layer0. “We’re able to provision infrastructure on AWS for each developer, where their traffic is not impacted by any other users.” To securely provision AWS accounts for different developers, Layer0 uses AWS Identity and Access Management (AWS IAM), which lets customers create and manage AWS users and groups and use permissions to allow and deny access to AWS resources. Layer0’s solution has helped Universal Standard increase its developer velocity significantly. The Universal Standard team is able to develop, test, and deploy changes to its website at a faster pace, improving the company’s speed to market.

Universal Standard has also seen significant business growth by providing its customers with a faster, higher-performing website experience, particularly among mobile users. “Before Universal Standard migrated, its traffic was evenly split between desktop and mobile, but its conversion rate was much lower on mobile,” says Bradley. “After the migration, 70 percent of its traffic now comes from mobile users, which has brought incredible business wins.” Universal Standard increased its mobile conversion rate by 200 percent since migrating to Layer0’s architecture. Additionally, Universal Standard has reduced its bounce rate by 60 percent and increased its average session duration by 200 percent. This improved website experience has translated into tangible growth for Universal Standard; it has increased average order value by 42 percent and unlocked an 81 percent increase in revenue year over year.

“Immediately after launching Layer0’s solution, Universal Standard’s page load times dropped from 4–7 s to about 1.5 s.” 

- Lauren Bradley, Content Marketing Manager, Layer0

Enhancing Ecommerce Experiences on AWS

In the future, Universal Standard and Layer0 will continue to create, test, and deploy new website updates, further enhancing the customer experience and improving Universal Standard’s ecommerce performance in the competitive retail industry. For example, it will continue to work with Layer0 to advance its website accessibility features, maximize speed and performance, and iterate its user experience and brand design for different devices and markets.

By migrating to a modern, serverless ecommerce architecture from Layer0, Universal Standard accelerated its development speeds, reduced latency, and unlocked business growth. “We plan on working with Universal Standard to continue to build and improve the site,” says Gilbert. “Our teams are both very forward-thinking.”

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