Kepka.uno is a D2C cap and headwear brand selling to consumers across Eastern Europe. The previous OpenCart-based site was slow on mobile, the checkout had a 5-step flow with mandatory account creation, and the catalog filters were unusable on phones. The redesign brief: mobile-first, instant filters, guest checkout, sub-3s LCP on 4G.

The brief

70% of Kepka.uno traffic is mobile. The existing site lost ~40% of mobile shoppers between catalog and checkout. We needed to identify where, fix the worst regressions, and rebuild the flow without throwing away the OpenCart catalog data.

Approach

A two-week audit revealed three killer regressions: filters reloaded the page (3-5s lag per filter change), checkout required account creation up front (24% drop-off there alone), and product cards lacked critical info (no stock indicator, no shipping estimate). We rebuilt those three flows without touching the OpenCart data model.

Stack

  • OpenCart kept as the catalog and order backend
  • Custom mobile-first storefront UI (replacing the OpenCart theme entirely)
  • Catalog: instant filters via debounced AJAX (no page reload), URL-synced for shareability
  • Product cards: stock indicator (color), shipping estimate by region, social proof (reviews count)
  • Checkout: 2-step (cart → contact + payment), guest by default, account optional post-purchase
  • Payment: existing local provider + new Stripe + Apple Pay (mobile critical)

Build

3 sprints. Sprint 1 — catalog UI + instant filters end-to-end on staging with real OpenCart data. Sprint 2 — product detail page + checkout flow + Apple Pay. Sprint 3 — mobile polish, Core Web Vitals pass, analytics events for full funnel tracking.

Surprise win: adding Apple Pay as the first option on mobile checkout converted ~30% of mobile orders alone — many shoppers had it set up and chose it because it was faster than typing card details on a phone.

Outcomes

  • Mobile conversion rate: ~+35% in the 60 days post-launch
  • Cart-to-checkout drop-off: cut by ~half (account-creation removal was the single biggest factor)
  • Mobile LCP: 1.9s (was 4.2s)
  • Apple Pay share of mobile checkouts: ~30%
  • Average mobile session length: +40%

What we'd do differently

We A/B-tested the new checkout against the old one but underestimated the seasonal variance — the launch landed during a sale period and our 60-day window included two promotional spikes. The lift numbers are conservative because we factored that out, but a cleaner test would have launched in a quiet week first.

Bottom line

Kepka.uno is a textbook case of "fix the funnel, not the funnel's aesthetics". The visual redesign mattered, but the conversion lift came from removing forced account creation and adding Apple Pay on mobile.

Have an e-commerce site bleeding mobile shoppers? We'll do a 1-day audit and tell you the top 3 fixes.