St1 Car Wash: From Legacy to Modern Commerce
In energy company St1’s digital transformation initiative, the old Magento-based car wash e-commerce platform was replaced with a new microservice architecture and headless frontend. The project was a business-critical undertaking for St1, requiring comprehensive technical and strategic expertise.
Background and Strategic Foundation
The old online store built on a Magento implementation was due for modernization. At the same time, an opportunity was identified to renew the customer experience and integrate the previously separate online store into a seamless service package under a single website. Previously, the store had its own domain, but now it would be incorporated into the St1.fi site. As a result, the number of portals would be reduced from two to one, improving the customer experience.
The new service package was designed to include everything the customer needs, such as wash codes, user information, purchase history, and receipts. HiQ’s strategic recommendation was to completely replace the monolithic structure with a micro service architecture, enabling agile further development and maintenance. At the core of the solution is the Contentful content management system, where all services share the same visual components and design system, allowing efficient scaling to meet the needs of all St1 Nordic services.
Technical Implementation: From Monolith to Microservices
The technical renewal included comprehensive architectural planning, utilizing a microservice-based architecture to enable modularity, rapid development, and easy maintenance. The solution was a headless architecture, where the frontend was implemented using Nuxt3 technology, offering a flexible and modern user interface for multichannel purposes.
Contentful CMS was chosen for content management. Combined with the design system, it can significantly streamline development and enable efficient reuse of components across services. One of the solution’s key strengths is its multichannel capability—the same backend serves seamlessly across platforms. Customers can shop smoothly in all channels, ensuring a consistent user experience and greatly simplifying maintenance. Integration expertise was especially crucial for seamlessly connecting payment gateways and product information management into the overall solution.
Combined with the design system, Contentful CMS can significantly streamline development and enables efficient reuse of components across services. One of the solution’s key strengths is its multichannel capability—the same backend serves seamlessly across platforms.
Service Design in an Important Role
Service design was used in the project to ensure a smooth customer experience. The user stories predefined by St1—based on user-specific needs across different platforms and situations—served as the starting point. These were then validated and refined using service design tools.
The entire team both from St1 and HiQ participated in workshops where KPI’s and the purchase process was visually mapped step by step. This approach ensured alignment on the project’s scope, content, and decision-making throughout the journey. Reviewing assumptions clarified the project scope significantly. For example, definitions of payment methods and technical integration requirements were refined during the process, accelerating and streamlining later implementation.
Outcome and Strategic Impact
The result was a renewed car wash e-commerce platform that enables significantly faster responses to business needs, marketing campaigns, and the launch of new services. The renewal supports St1’s strategic goal of developing customer-centric digital services that are scalable and easy to maintain.
Security aspects were carefully considered throughout the implementation, and the solution passed an external security audit with excellent marks. The solution ensures secure payments and high operational safety, which are critical for e-commerce operations.
The foundation of the successful collaboration was the long-standing partnership between HiQ and St1, along with a deep understanding of the customer’s business and technical environment. HiQ’s diverse expertise combined comprehensive architectural insight, integration know-how, Contentful and Magento knowledge, as well as service design and UI/UX design.
The solution was co-designed with the customer, taking into account not only current needs but also future visions. The renewed service lays a solid foundation for future development.
Collaboration in a nutshell:
- Replacing Magento with Microservices Architecture: The legacy monolithic e-commerce solution was replaced with a microservices-based architecture, enabling modularity, rapid development, and easy maintenance
- Headless Frontend with Nuxt3: A modern and flexible user interface was built using Nuxt3, supporting seamless multi-channel experiences.
- Contentful CMS + Design System: Combined with a design system, Contentful streamlines development and enables efficient reuse of components across services.
- Integration of Payment Portals and Product Data: Payment systems and product information were smoothly integrated into the new service ecosystem.
- Incorporating the Online Store into St1.fi: The standalone online store was incorporated with the main St1.fi site, improving customer experience by consolidating portals.
- Service Design Approach: User stories were validated and refined through workshops that mapped KPIs and visualized the purchase journey.
- Collaboration and Expertise: The project was delivered in close partnership with St1, leveraging HiQ’s broad expertise in architecture, integrations, Contentful, Magento, service design, and UI/UX.
