Dwarven Forge’s growing catalog had outgrown standard Shopify themes and search — results were slow, filtering was weak, and large collections strained performance, and they needed a faster search experience, better browsing, and a more scalable theme architecture.

I built a Next.js + Algolia search app alongside deep Shopify theme and architecture upgrades, adding fast search, smarter discovery UIs, AJAX cart flows, and recommendation systems, and this combination turned a slow, constrained storefront into a responsive, scalable experience.

A custom indexing pipeline syncs Shopify into Algolia, where Next.js + InstantSearch deliver millisecond results tuned for Dwarven Forge’s catalog, and on the Shopify side, optimized APIs, Liquid refactors, AJAX cart flows, recommendations, and aggressive performance tuning rebuilt the theme into a scalable foundation.

The UI rebuilt search, collections, and product pages around speed and clarity — instant-feeling search, better filters, modern cards, and streamlined cart flows, and mobile navigation and browsing became far more intuitive, even with thousands of SKUs.

The work had to tame a huge, option-heavy catalog, replace legacy search, optimize a heavy theme, and add recommendations — all while keeping search in the tens of milliseconds, and I tackled this with a custom indexing pipeline, modular theme refactors, smart Algolia rules, caching, and rebuilt UI components.

Search speeds jumped from multi-second waits to sub-50ms responses, while navigation, discoverability, and cart engagement all improved, and Dwarven Forge now has a premium, app-like Shopify experience and a search foundation that can grow with its catalog.