How HanesBrands and Adobe built one of the fastest ecommerce websites in the world
When HanesBrands, Inc. launched a new website for its Maidenform brand in September 2023, Vice President and Global Head of Consumer Technology Leo Griffin knew the site would be fast. But he didn't know it would be so fast that his Google Lighthouse Score would max out overnight.
The launch was the culmination of a two-year quest to improve the speed of HanesBrands’ ecommerce sites. Griffin’s team supports the company’s direct to consumer businesses. In 2021, the team was focused on increasing the speed of product description pages, which were average as reflected in Google’s Lighthouse score (meaning lower Google search rankings).
Because ecommerce sites integrate multiple systems, render large amounts of information on pages, and offer increasingly higher levels of personalization, these sites tend to operate more slowly than others. But Griffin and his team were determined to find a way to speed up the HanesBrands sites, which were built on several different platforms, including Adobe Commerce. In late 2022, HanesBrands partnered with Adobe to develop and pilot Edge Delivery Services, a new set of capabilities in Adobe Experience Manager Sites that uses innovative edge architecture to enable lighting-fast page-load times.
The result was one of the fastest ecommerce websites in the world.
“It truly is a breakthrough. It’s a radical improvement on anything else out there in the market.”
Leo Griffin, Vice President and Global Head of Consumer Technology, HanesBrands, Inc.
Gaining a competitive ‘edge’
Google Lighthouse scores are an open-source measurement of site performance based on Google Chrome user experience data. These scores drive greater organic search traffic and conversions through higher page rankings and engagement. Lighthouse scores rate sites from 1–100, and it takes constant optimization to maintain a healthy score.
Most of the HanesBrands sites were operating at scores in the 20s, which is considered standard for ecommerce. But Griffin and his team wanted to do better for HanesBrands consumers. Even with constant optimizations, the speed was costing them traffic — which meant lost opportunities for new consumers to discover their products.
The team tried several solutions, but none improved their Lighthouse score. When Griffin contacted Adobe to look for new ideas, he was connected to a research team in Switzerland working on a new way to deliver site speed through edge architecture.
“Adobe was looking for a B2C ecommerce site to work with, and we wanted to go faster,” says Griffin. “We had a virtual handshake on a Teams call, and off we went.”
The teams chose to focus on Maidenform, a 101-year-old brand with a history of innovation and a new line of products, for the joint project. In a few short months, the rebranded Maidenform website, complete with the new Edge Delivery Services in Experience Manager Sites, was ready to launch.
“It’s a lightning-fast experience. I’ve done quite a lot of research to try and find an ecommerce website in the world that is faster, and I haven’t found anything that comes close.”
Leo Griffin, Vice President and Global Head of Consumer Technology, HanesBrands, Inc.
A lightning-fast experience
The day before the launch, Griffin checked the Lighthouse score for the Maidenform site. The score was 1. The team hadn’t been optimizing the site while focusing on Edge Delivery, so the score had completely eroded. After the launch, he checked again. The score was 100. Overnight, the Maidenform website had become one of the fastest websites in the world.
The team was ecstatic. One executive was curious how quickly he could move through the site, and he found he could visit the home page, click on a product page, select a product, add it to a cart, and get to checkout — all before the cookie consent banner appeared.
“It was so fast that our data protection service was flagging shoppers because their behavior was inconsistent with typical human browsing behavior, something that was quickly and easily adjusted,” Griffin says. “And that proved the new technology was faster than almost anything in existence.”
“We’re consistently running between 95 and 100, which is an incredible speed jump,” says Griffin. “It’s a lightning-fast experience. I’ve done quite a lot of research to try and find an ecommerce website in the world that is faster, and I haven’t found anything that comes close. It truly is a breakthrough. It’s a radical improvement on anything else out there in the market.”
Experience Manager Sites and Adobe Commerce have become a powerful combination for Griffin and his team.
“We’ve been running Adobe Commerce for years now, and it’s the right solution for us because of its modularity and composability — I think of it as a very flexible toolkit,” says Griffin. “The biggest drawback was speed, but Edge Delivery has completely eliminated that trade-off.”
It will take another six months to measure the full business impact of Edge Delivery, but the HanesBrands team expects to see an increase in traffic from SEO and SEM, lower bounce rates, higher conversions, and more units per transaction. The new architecture also makes it significantly easier and faster to update the site.
“We've been talking about speed, but the ease and simplicity of updating and managing the site is arguably as big a change, if not bigger,” says Griffin. “It’s going to take work off our UI-UX team and developers so they can focus on more productive projects. It's going to allow the site ops team to drive faster, more frequent site refreshes with more agility. It’s going to change the way we develop on the platform.”
“It’s a dream come true to be as responsive to the business as we have been. We’re saying, ‘Hey, you wanted something faster? Well, we may possibly have the fastest ecommerce site in the world.’”
Leo Griffin, Vice President and Global Head of Consumer Technology, HanesBrands, Inc.
A dream come true
Griffin and his team plan to roll out Edge Delivery Services in Experience Manager Sites and Adobe Commerce across all HanesBrands websites, starting with its global Champion sportswear brand.
“Edge Delivery will make it much easier to create a single, unified consumer experience across our major geographies while integrating into multiple back ends,” says Griffin. “We’ll create a single pane of glass that integrates our Adobe Commerce instances and reflects local catalogs, currencies, and pricing in a single global experience.”
Looking back over the last year, Griffin and his team are grateful to have the opportunity to be part of a breakthrough collaboration.
“It’s not every day you get to do something truly innovative,” he says. “We have a lot of legacy systems, and a lot of my job has been about catching up. But I’ve always looked for opportunities to leapfrog where I can. Adobe is an amazing partner in helping us to not just catch up to peers, but to truly overtake the competition.”
It also doesn’t hurt that Adobe Experience Manager Sites helped the HanesBrands team overdeliver to their business partners.
HanesBrands is prioritizing initiatives around being a digital and data-driven enterprise, which allows its brands to focus on being even more consumer-centric. Listening to the consumer is critical to success. Consumers want fast, reliable service on ecommerce websites that are easy to navigate and perform quickly. And Griffin and his team delivered on this goal.
“For me and my team, it’s a dream come true to be as responsive to the business as we have been,” he says. “We’re saying, ‘Hey, you wanted something faster? Well, we may possibly have the fastest ecommerce site in the world.’”
Join our experts in this on-demand webinar to learn about the latest innovations from Adobe Experience Manager Sites. Then learn more about Adobe Commerce which, together with Experience Manager Sites, powers the Maidenform website.