E-commerce · CMS Platform
ASAP
A parts distribution company running 658 separate .NET websites, rebuilt as one Next.js CMS, with a site for every vertical and a single place to manage them all.
- Role
- Lead Product Designer
- Timeline
- Late 2025 to 2026
- Year
- 2026
- Industry
- E-commerce · CMS
The problem
658 websites, each stuck on aging .NET, each with its own admin panel. Infrastructure ran about $85K a month, and with no central platform, the SEO and content teams couldn't stay in sync across sites.
My role
I led a team of four designers. I designed the CMS and its full component system, then guided the team as we rebuilt every site through it, working alongside a separate engineering lead.
The outcome
One Next.js CMS running all 658 sites. Infrastructure dropped to about $32K a month, RFQs rose 10%, and every site is now managed from a single dashboard.
62% less
Monthly infrastructure cost, from $85K down to $32K
658 → 1
Legacy .NET sites unified into one Next.js CMS
+10%
Increase in RFQs across the network of sites
Challenge
658 sites, one system.
The hard part was never a single screen. It was scale. Designing 658 sites by hand was impossible, and letting each one drift on its own was exactly the mess we were leaving behind. I had to build a system flexible enough to fit very different verticals, yet consistent enough that one team could run all of it. On top of that, the old setup gave every site its own admin, so the people handling SEO and content were working blind across the network.
Process
Themes by vertical, custom for the few that mattered.
I grouped the 658 sites by vertical and designed a small set of themes, then mapped each site to the template that fit it. For the top ten sites, the ones that carried the most weight, I designed custom experiences. Everything else ran on shared theming, which is what made the scale manageable. Along the way I introduced JSON-based components so we could design new components at runtime with Claude and drop them straight into a site, which kept the team fast as the migration ramped up.
Solution
A builder, plus one dashboard over everything.
The CMS is a drag-and-drop website builder with a library of components and ready-made templates. Each site has its own admin controls inside the CMS, scoped to that site, while a master dashboard sits above all of them with network-wide insight. Shared SEO controls at the site level finally let the teams work in step, and are a big part of why RFQs went up. Around forty people now run the entire network from one place.