88% Faster Page Loads and Lower Infrastructure Costs Across AAW's Adobe Commerce Ecosystem
Fashion & Apparel
Footwear
Healthcare & Pharmaceutical
Home & Decor
Beauty & Personal Care
Company Brief
Ali Abdulwahab Al Mutawa Commercial Co., widely known as AAW, is one of Kuwait's oldest, largest, and most successful retail and distribution conglomerates. A century-old business built on a commitment to quality, the brand operates across nine diverse divisions, including Sports and Lifestyle, Home Living, Consumer Goods, Pharmaceuticals, Food and Beverage, Insurance, Travel, and Real Estate.
Representing over 100 global brands, AAW runs multiple eCommerce platforms serving a wide customer base across Kuwait in both English and Arabic.
Implementing Varnish Caching
Integrating Powerlisting for Faster PLPs
Optimizing Backend Indexing
Enabling Ajax Loading
Reducing Infrastructure Costs
Strengthening Platform Stability
Project Overview
AAW's eCommerce platforms were struggling to keep pace with the demands of a growing multi-brand retail ecosystem. Slow page loads, inefficient caching, and indexing bottlenecks were impacting customer experience while driving up infrastructure costs across multiple digital storefronts.
Codilar optimized AAW's Adobe Commerce (Magento) ecosystem through advanced caching, Powerlisting, Ajax-based loading, and indexing improvements. The result was 88% faster page loads, enhanced platform stability, and significantly lower infrastructure costs, all without additional server investments.
Business Challenges
Escalating infrastructure costs due to poor platform performance across multiple eCommerce sites
Slow load times across PLPs, PDPs, cart, and checkout pages
Redis misused for full page caching, overloading server resources
Absence of Varnish caching reduced response rates and increased operational costs
Slow indexing processes impacted backend processing times and platform reliability
No active monitoring or incident management system in place
Codilar's Solution Approach
Integrated Varnish caching to efficiently serve cached responses and reduce server strain
Deployed Powerlisting to eliminate MySQL dependency and replace it with Elasticsearch for faster PLPs
Implemented Ajax loading for related products, cross-sells, reviews, and size guides
Built custom block caching for frequently accessed elements like megamenu and checkout configurations
Optimized core indexing logic by reducing redundant database queries and skipping disabled store views
Implemented 24/7 monitoring and alerting for proactive incident management and faster resolution
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Managing performance across six eCommerce platforms simultaneously is not a simple fix. It requires understanding where the bottlenecks are, why they exist, and engineering the right solution for each one. That is exactly what we did for AAW, and the numbers speak for themselves.
Shahed Jamal
Practice Head, Adobe Commerce, Codilar
AAW's Adobe Commerce Performance Engineering Breakdown
A Multi-Brand Platform Running Below Its Potential
AAW had built one of Kuwait's most recognized multi-brand retail ecosystems, with six eCommerce platforms serving a wide customer base across Sports, Home Living, Pharmacy, and more. But behind the storefronts, performance was quietly becoming a liability.
Critical pages were slow. Category and product pages were taking up to 10 seconds to load. Cart and checkout pages were no different. Infrastructure costs were climbing as the team scaled up server capacity to compensate for poor performance. The platforms needed more than a quick fix. They needed a structured, technical overhaul from the ground up.
The Varnish Implementation That Eliminated Server Overload
Without Varnish in place, every incoming request was being processed directly by the server. Redis, never designed for full page caching, was being misused, overloading resources and driving up operational costs across all six platforms.
Varnish caching was implemented to efficiently serve cached responses for non-dynamic content. Custom caching strategies were built for high-traffic elements like the megamenu and checkout configurations, reducing server strain and delivering a faster, more stable experience across every storefront.
Powerlisting for Faster Product Discovery
Slow Product Listing Pages were directly impacting the shopping experience across AAW's platforms. The core issue was MySQL dependency, where all product listing data, including titles, prices, images, and reviews, was being fetched from the database on every request.
Powerlisting, Codilar's proprietary optimization tool, was integrated to eliminate this dependency entirely. By indexing all essential product data directly into Elasticsearch, listing pages could now load independently of MySQL. The result was a dramatic reduction in PLP load times from 10 seconds to 1.2 seconds, an 88% improvement that transformed product discovery across all six platforms.
Smarter Indexing and Ajax for Faster Pages
Two more layers of friction were quietly slowing AAW's platforms down. Heavy synchronous page loads and slow backend indexing were adding unnecessary processing overhead across every storefront.
Ajax loading was implemented for related products, cross-sells, reviews, and size guides, allowing them to load independently and improving initial page speeds. Backend indexing was optimized by reducing redundant database queries and skipping disabled store views, improving Search Spell-Correction by 89%, Product EAV by 86%, and third-party label indexers by 95%.
We Make An Impact
Through Our Work
Faster PLP and SLP
Page Load Times
Reduction in Filtering
and Sorting Response Time
Improvement in Third-Party
Label Indexers
Uplift in Search
Spell-Correction Indexer
Faster Product
EAV Indexer
Faster Product Detail
Page Load Times
We Make An Impact
Through Our Work
Faster PLP and SLP
Page Load Times
Reduction in Filtering
and Sorting Response Time
Improvement in Third-Party
Label Indexers
Uplift in Search
Spell-Correction Indexer
Faster Product
EAV Indexer
Faster Product Detail
Page Load Times
“Working with Codilar has really been an amazing journey. Not only did they enhance our website speed but they also managed to reduce product loading time was faster, and checkout performance was on par. The way their team collaborated with us and guided us through the entire process, really helped in a smooth execution.”
Hala M Thiab
Senior Manager eCommerce
AAW
Performance Delivered Across Every Front
The impact of the optimization was immediate and measurable across all six platforms. PLPs went from 10 seconds to 1.2 seconds, filtering responses dropped from 6 seconds to 600ms, and PDP load times improved by up to 70%. Cart and checkout pages, previously among the slowest touchpoints, now load in under 2.5 seconds.
Backend indexing improvements ranging from 86% to 95% meant faster site updates and greater stability. Most significantly, AAW achieved all of this without a single server capacity upgrade, turning a cost burden into a competitive advantage.
From Performance Debt to Commerce Excellence
AAW's platforms now deliver the speed and stability that a multi-brand retail conglomerate of its scale demands. Pages load faster, infrastructure costs are lower, and the team spends less time managing performance issues and more time driving growth.
For enterprise brands managing multiple eCommerce platforms, performance is not just a technical metric, but a business advantage. As an Adobe Gold Solution Partner, Codilar brings the engineering depth and platform expertise to identify what is slowing a business down and fix it at the core. That is exactly what was delivered for AAW.
