In 2017 AKQA Berlin delivered the multi-market website for the global drinks brand Jagermeister. It was a React + Express + Contentful setup with class based components. When I joined AKQA in 2021 I became one of the main developers supporting the retainer work for the client. This involved creating new components, maintaining the existing code, and supporting content creators.
In 2022 we started working on an update to the Jagermeister website with a new stack and a Shopify integration. This time we used a Next JS framework hosted by Vercel, using a single repository that contained the components and the UI. We were working from Figma designs and created standalone components in Storybook first, later configuring them in the UI. Chromatic fed off those Stories and was a part of the CI helping tremendously with visual regressions.
This was a project where developers weren't restricted to silos, and consequently I had exposure to much of the site. For example, creating components such as the navigation, teaser modules, login and registration forms; adding all the tracking to the site as well as on Shopify by modifying their liquid themes; creating content models in Contentful and configuring respective queries, adaptors, and resolvers; updating the contexts to avoid prop dilling; setting up an automated versioning system that would be accessible from the frontend; adding product and recipe JSON-LD for SEO optimization, and much more.