Improving Performance and Product Discovery with Hyvä Commerce
Meet the Client
Burton Power has been supplying parts to the classic, performance, rally, and race markets since 1963.
The company is particularly well known for performance engines and parts for classic Fords such as the Escort, Cortina, and Capri, while its offering for modern Ford vehicles continues to expand. Its rich catalog ranges from individual gaskets and components to complete bespoke race engines, gearboxes, axles, suspension, brakes, electrical components, instrumentation, and supporting products.
Decades of specialist knowledge have made Burton Power much more than an online parts retailer. For enthusiasts and motorsport customers, finding the right component often depends on technical expertise, compatibility information, and trust in the people supplying the product.
As the business continued to grow, however, the gap between Burton Power’s reputation and its digital storefront was becoming increasingly apparent.
The Challenge: The Business Has Moved Forward. The Storefront Hadn’t.
Burton Power’s eCommerce business was performing well and entering another period of strong growth. The existing Magento platform continued to support the company’s core business processes, but the customer-facing experience no longer reflected the business behind it.
The visual design was showing its age. Product pages contained valuable information, but did not always make that information as accessible and easy to understand as it could be.
The legacy frontend architecture also carried considerable technical weight. Pages required large numbers of frontend resources to render, creating performance limitations and making continued frontend development unnecessarily complex.
This led to an important strategic decision.
Rather than rebuilding an entire commerce platform that was already supporting a successful business, we would focus the investment where it could make the greatest difference: the customer-facing experience and its underlying frontend technology.
From Technical Audit to a Modernization Roadmap
Our engagement started with a Magento Technical Audit.
Rather than treating the audit as a checklist of isolated technical issues, we used it to understand Burton Power’s existing architecture, customer experience, performance limitations, and opportunities for future development.
The resulting recommendation was a focused modernization roadmap:
- redesign the storefront around the needs of Burton Power’s customers;
- replace the legacy Magento frontend with Hyvä;
- improve performance and Core Web Vitals;
- make complex product and category information easier to navigate;
- upgrade and clean up the underlying Magento platform where required;
- preserve existing business logic and functionality that continues to work well.
Following the audit, we took over responsibility for the Magento project from Burton Power’s previous development partner and started implementing the roadmap.
The goal was not changed for the sake of change. It was to modernize the areas where Burton Power had accumulated the largest gap between a growing business and an aging digital experience.
Rebuilding the Customer Experience with Hyvä Commerce
The centerpiece of the project was a complete UX/UI redesign and frontend rewrite using Hyvä Commerce.
Moving away from the legacy frontend gave us an opportunity to reconsider the experience across the storefront while retaining Magento as the commerce engine underneath it.
The new visual system gives Burton Power a significantly more contemporary digital identity, but the redesign went beyond aesthetics.
Navigation, category presentation, product information, calls to action, mobile interactions, and supporting content were reconsidered as parts of a single shopping journey.
Motion and subtle interface transitions were introduced to create a more responsive and contemporary experience without sacrificing the lightweight approach that was one of the project’s primary technical objectives.
The result is a storefront designed around a simple principle: make a large, specialist automotive catalog easier and more enjoyable to explore.
“Working alongside the Inchoo team during our Hyva Magento upgrade has been an extremely positive experience for us. The way Inchoo always pull together and work as a team by leveraging their combined skills and solving complex challenges is truly impressive.
Having partnered with Inchoo just last year, the rate at which enhancements to our Magento website are now being delivered has been dramatically improved. Furthermore, Inchoo are the only Magento partner that we have ever worked with who I feel are our trusted advisors.
Turning Category Navigation into Product Discovery
Large automotive catalogs naturally develop deep category structures. Intermediary category pages can therefore easily become little more than lists of links leading customers further down the catalog hierarchy.
We wanted them to do more.
Burton Power’s redesigned intermediary category pages now act as product discovery and merchandising hubs.
Alongside primary child categories, the pages can highlight secondary categories, showcase new arrivals, and connect shoppers with relevant CMS content.
This allows Burton Power to guide customers rather than simply presenting another level of navigation.
For a specialist automotive retailer, this distinction matters. Customers may arrive knowing exactly which component they need, but they may also be exploring a particular vehicle, system, or performance upgrade. The new category experience supports both behaviors.
We also introduced a Recently Viewed Products feature, making it easier for customers researching several technical products to return to items they have previously considered. Small details matter.
Making Complex Product Decisions Easier
The product detail page received one of the most significant UX overhauls.
Automotive aftermarket products frequently require more information than a typical retail product. Fitment details, technical attributes, availability, shipping information, and support can all influence whether a customer feels confident enough to place an order.
The redesigned Burton Power product page establishes a clearer information hierarchy and presents important product attributes in a more open and readable layout.
Crucial fitment and technical details are easier to identify, while information about shipping, refunds, and help with an order is made more prominent.
The objective was not to reduce the amount of information available to customers. It was to make that information easier to consume so customers can make informed purchasing decisions.
Connecting Commerce with the Burton Power Community
Burton Power has a long-standing presence in the performance and motorsport community, attending and sponsoring numerous events throughout the year.
The new storefront gives that part of the brand a stronger digital presence.
We created a dedicated Events hub where visitors can discover upcoming events, see where they can meet the Burton Power team, and access relevant event registration offers. The page is powered by Hyvä CMS, allowing the Burton Power team to manage the content without requiring development work for routine updates.
A Dramatically Leaner Storefront
The product detail page received one of the most significant UX overhauls.
The visual transformation is immediately noticeable. The architectural transformation is even larger.
One of the primary objectives of moving to Hyvä was to reduce the amount of frontend resources required to deliver Burton Power’s shopping experience.
Our before-and-after benchmarks showed substantial reductions across the storefront:
The amount of transferred data was reduced as well. The homepage, for example, dropped from approximately 3.1 MB to 1.6 MB, while the category page decreased from approximately 2 MB to 1.1 MB.
| Page | Req. Before | Req. After | Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Homepage | 124 | 80 | 35% |
| Int. Category | 100 | 64 | 36% |
| Category | 134 | 63 | 53% |
| Product Page | 99 | 57 | 42% |
| Cart (10 products) |
484 | 58 | 88% |
| Checkout (10 products) |
584 | 41 | 93% |
The improvements were also reflected in Lighthouse performance scores.
On mobile, the category page improved from 66 to 92, while the intermediary category page moved from 39 to 68. On desktop, the homepage increased from 71 to 96, with the category page improving from 76 to 91.
Most importantly, improvements were not limited to synthetic performance tests.
After sufficient post-launch real-user data became available, Core Web Vitals measurements showed:
- 10.8% improvement in Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
- 12.7% improvement in First Contentful Paint (FCP)
- 5.6% improvement in Time to First Byte (TTFB)
CLS remained stable during the measured period, while INP was 4.5% slower.
This distinction matters to us. Performance optimization is not about achieving a perfect screenshot from a testing tool. It is about creating a leaner storefront and improving the experience delivered to real customers.
Early Commercial Signals and a Foundation for What Comes Next
Burton Power was already experiencing significant business growth before the new storefront launched, so we do not attribute that growth to the redesign alone.
The early post-launch results were nevertheless encouraging. In the first weeks after launch, the store recorded a higher purchase conversion rate compared with the period immediately before the redesign, including positive movement in Burton Power’s primary UK market.
These results should be viewed as early signals rather than definitive proof of causation. Burton Power’s business was already on a strong growth trajectory, and changes to analytics implementation limit the reliability of broader long-term comparisons.
What we can demonstrate more clearly is the transformation of the platform itself.
Burton Power now has a storefront that better reflects the strength of its brand, makes its specialist automotive catalog easier to explore, requires significantly fewer frontend resources, performs better for real users, and provides a stronger foundation for continued development.
The project did not rebuild what was already working.
It modernized the part of the business customers see and use every day, while preserving the commerce foundation that had already helped Burton Power grow.
Burton Power now runs on Hyvä Commerce, making it easier to customize and maintain by eliminating traditional Magento frontend bloat.
Since launch, performance gains have shown up clearly in both synthetic tests and real-user field metrics. Google Lighthouse scores saw immediate jumps across key page templates.
Crucially, these gains extend beyond lab environments. As post-launch real-user traffic accumulated, field data confirmed direct improvements in core user experience metrics.
“The Burton Power project for Inchoo was a project that opened us up to the Hyvä ecosystem even further, and it was our first project on Hyvä Commerce. We had a lot of experience with the Hyvä Themes, but working with Hyvä CMS and Hyvä Checkout was a new experience that I really enjoyed. I mean, better frontend performance gives me even more motivation and joy to code. From a coding perspective, we had some tricky functionalities that we needed to rewrite for the Hyvä Theme, but everything was successfully done. Also, Trevor was the first client who used Playwright to test our work, so I would say the site is pretty battle-tested at this point. And I really love the new look and feel of Burton Power as well. It feels like we gave their classic Fords a digital tuning upgrade, more horsepower for the frontend!“
— Josip Oužecky, Lead frontend developer at Inchoo.“