KICKSCREW

Has become one of the most trusted and smooth digital sneaker trading platforms, expanding to apparel and accessories, offering over 400,000 unique styles online and supporting global shipping. I will introduce several key features and the ones I was responsible for. Like all e-commerce platforms, basic features such as product browsing, search, cart, and checkout are all available. Further, it integrates auto-recommendation, sharing, and 360-degree product viewing. Users can easily share their favorite products and earn cashback, while also seeing more product details. Besides sneakers, there are regular collaborations with NBA stars, such as Kyrie Irving, Damian Liliard, and more. Hot products like POP MART are also sold based on market analysis. Unlike other e-commerce platforms, to have more granular control, we moved away from Shopify. From checkout/payment to event publishing and product listing, everything is developed and maintained by the internal team. This allows us to iterate and adjust features faster and respond more flexibly to market changes.

You can see all product info, reviews, favorites, etc. After A/B testing, we chose the most suitable way for users to read product details, helping them make better purchase decisions.

All order statuses, issue reports, real-time price adjustments, buyer/seller offers, shipping methods (dropship, dropoff, etc.), member management, and all admin operations are developed for internal use by staff and departments. The procurement team can see seller offers, compare prices, and set purchase order and strategy. The customer service team can instantly report order issues and handle buyer questions. Login uses third-party OAuth, integrating Google login for quick access. Custom features like quick search and common filter combinations are added based on department feedback. Deployment uses GCP, and as a frontend engineer, I also documented the GCP deployment process for future team members to onboard quickly. These backend features allow us to manage the platform more efficiently, with single sign-on. The admin usage rate is 100%, every department uses it daily. Integrating all features into the backend greatly reduces the complexity and repeated logins of using multiple systems, improving work efficiency.

But there was still the i18n issue, which surfaced as the market and team expanded. Our website needed to support multiple languages. Initially, the dev team handled translation and management, which allowed for quick launches but was limited to Chinese and English. Later, with European and Middle Eastern markets, we needed a better system, so we introduced POEditor. This shifted translation responsibility from devs to a dedicated translation team, letting devs focus on product features. This not only improved translation quality but also allowed us to launch i18n versions faster—language update speed increased by over 50%. Management became more logical and clear. I documented the considerations and decisions, analyzing pros/cons and implementation.

I'm not an SEO expert, but for e-commerce, ranking higher on Google is crucial. Better ranking means users can find you first. To this end, I did a lot of optimization, including writing LDJson, accessibility design, prioritized content loading, so crawlers and browsers can identify key info immediately. I also handled the three main Lighthouse metrics. Here I recorded some of my SEO optimization thoughts and observations.

Payment is very important. We chose Adyen as our payment management platform. In addition to regular credit card payments, we considered different regional payment habits and integrated Apple Pay, Google Pay, Klarna, etc. to cover global user preferences. Among these, Apple Pay is the most complex: you need to apply for a domain on the official website, go through a series of verifications and settings, and for testing, apply for a dedicated test Apple ID and specific region test cards. I have documented the entire process in detail for future colleagues or for my own reference.

This website is also part of my work, and the team invested a lot of time and effort. As a developer, I know this is a big project. There are also many personal learnings and notes, trying to transform input into output, which is important for knowledge consolidation. This is an overview and highlights the key features I participated in. There are also many small ideas and details, like user behavior tracking, performance optimization, architecture considerations, etc. If I wrote them all, it would be too technical. Please refer to the article list for more.