FashionCloud: Transforming Botiga’s Mobile App with AWS

Botiga, a personal wardrobe app, was facing significant challenges due to the overwhelming growth of their mobile app's image library. The influx of high-resolution product images was causing the app to load slowly, leading to user frustration and a potential decline in customer satisfaction. Additionally, the increasing storage requirements were putting a considerable financial strain on the business. These performance and cost issues threatened Botiga's competitive edge in the app market, as their competitors were likely experiencing similar challenges.

To address these critical pain points, Botiga needed a scalable solution that could effectively manage their growing image library without compromising user experience or incurring excessive costs. Such a solution would enable the app to load quickly, even with a large number of images, and control storage costs to ensure long-term sustainability.

Proposed Solution & Architecture

As an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner, we designed and implemented a tailored cloud solution for Botiga using a range of AWS services to optimise performance, scalability, and cost-efficiency. At the heart of our solution was Amazon CloudFront, a content delivery network (CDN) that accelerated the distribution of Botiga’s high-resolution images globally, drastically reducing latency and improving load times for their mobile app users. To ensure security, we integrated AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) into CloudFront, providing advanced protection against web threats and securing the platform without compromising performance.

For backend infrastructure, we deployed Amazon API Gateway in conjunction with AWS Lambda, creating a fully serverless environment to handle all incoming app requests. This serverless architecture enabled Botiga to scale seamlessly with fluctuating traffic, while reducing costs by only charging for compute time when it was actually needed. AWS Lambda, combined with a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), ensured that the entire system could run efficiently, handling traffic spikes without sacrificing performance.

To manage their growing image repository, we migrated Botiga’s content to Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), utilising S3’s Intelligent-Tiering to automatically optimise storage costs by transitioning older, less accessed images to more cost-effective storage tiers like Amazon S3 Glacier. This approach provided Botiga with virtually unlimited, highly scalable storage while keeping their operational costs in check. We also implemented AWS CloudTrail and CloudWatch to monitor and log activity across the system, ensuring full visibility, security, and compliance.

Finally, to ensure high availability and proactive issue resolution, we set up comprehensive monitoring and alerting systems using Amazon CloudWatch and Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS). These services provided real-time insights into system performance and alerted the Botiga team to any potential issues, allowing for rapid responses to maintain uptime and ensure optimal user experience. Through this robust, scalable, and secure AWS infrastructure, we empowered Botiga to deliver an outstanding mobile app experience to their users, fully prepared for future growth.

Cost Optimization and Efficiency

Leveraging Amazon S3’s Intelligent-Tiering and a serverless architecture, Botiga has successfully reduced its storage and compute costs. This has allowed them to manage their image repository efficiently while scaling their operations without incurring additional expenses, freeing up resources to invest in other areas of growth.

Scalability and Future Growth

The AWS-based solution ensures that Botiga can scale effortlessly as their business continues to expand. With a flexible, serverless infrastructure and scalable storage, Botiga is now well-prepared to handle increased traffic and data demands while maintaining optimal performance and cost-effectiveness.