Star Name Registry

When I joined the team in 2020, the platform was in its MVP stage with a heavily customized PrestaShop environment with an in-house theme and limited personalization features. Over the years, the platform expanded across 12 country-specific storefronts, later streamlined to 6, and evolved to offer a highly interactive and personalized user experience backed by robust functionality and visual polish.

My role covered full-stack development across all sites, with a strong focus on frontend development, backend logic, performance improvements, and user experience. The primary goals were to improve conversions, reduce user friction, enhance performance, and develop new features that elevated the overall shopping experience.

Working in PrestaShop with technologies like PHP, JavaScript, Smarty, MySQL, Preact, and Angular (on select components), I implemented a wide range of features and performance optimizations across all regional storefronts. I also worked directly on the server-side setup (NGINX, caching) and collaborated with designers, stakeholders, and another developer before eventually taking over most of the new feature development independently.

Key technical contributions included:

• Multi-Step Product Wizard: Developed a complex 8-step customization flow that lets users personalize their star, pick a constellation, choose the brightness, add messages, select add-ons, and upgrade their gift package. The UX had to be smooth, responsive, and intuitive across all devices.
• New Product Integrations: Integrated and built frontend/backend support for new product lines such as engraved jewelry and personalized candles, enabling dynamic previews and modular logic for inventory and fulfillment.
• Help Center System: Built a full-featured help center, including a searchable FAQ with autocomplete, individual article voting (“Was this helpful?”), and backend controls to manage content.
• Custom Theme & Seasonal Changer: Implemented theme functionality and created a module to dynamically change design elements during seasonal events (e.g., Christmas, Mother’s Day), helping drive engagement and align marketing with UI.
• Order Bug Resolution: Diagnosed and resolved a critical bug where users could unintentionally duplicate orders after checkout. Identified the issue through detailed trial and error and implemented an overlay with a loading spinner to prevent repeat interactions before confirmation.
• Modular PrestaShop Components: Built and maintained custom modules for various features and campaign-specific requirements, ensuring reusable, clean code architecture.
• Performance & SEO Optimizations: Introduced Brotli compression, lazy loading, responsive images via <picture>, semantic HTML5, and accessibility improvements — all contributing to better Lighthouse scores and search visibility.

Throughout the course of 5.5 years, Star Name Registry’s eCommerce platform became faster, more reliable, and more user-friendly. Customer satisfaction improved with better UX, fewer bugs, and a smoother personalization process — helping maintain a steady order volume and reduce support tickets. The help center and seasonal theming added polish and value to the brand experience.

Like with Maps for Moments, I started as a junior developer in a team of three and was promoted to mid-level early on. Over time, I became the primary contributor on the development side, independently delivering major features and infrastructure improvements that directly impacted sales, UX, and operational efficiency.