Gem Empire of Tiger is a luxury e-commerce platform built for a jewellery retailer specialising in precious metals, gemstones, and custom pieces. The client needed a website that matched the premium nature of the products — a photography-first design where the craftsmanship could speak for itself, combined with a fully functional online store capable of handling custom orders, international shipping, and secure payments.

The previous site was a generic WooCommerce template that loaded slowly, displayed product images at low quality, and provided no way for customers to filter by metal type, stone, or price range. Conversions were low because the browsing experience felt disconnected from the luxury positioning of the brand.

• Custom product catalogue with filtering by metal type, stone, and price
• High-performance image gallery with lazy loading and zoom
• Secure checkout with Stripe and support for international currencies
• Mobile-first responsive design optimised for product discovery
• SEO-optimised product pages for organic search visibility

Ark Crew rebuilt the platform on Next.js with a custom product filter that lets shoppers narrow by metal type (gold, silver, platinum), stone (diamond, ruby, emerald, sapphire), and price range. All product photography is served through an optimised image pipeline with lazy loading, progressive rendering, and a lightbox zoom view that lets customers inspect detail before purchasing.

Checkout is handled via Stripe with support for AUD, USD, GBP, and EUR. A custom order management dashboard lets the client update inventory, manage custom order requests, and track fulfilment without needing developer support.

The rebuild delivered a Lighthouse performance score above 90, a 3× improvement in page load speed, and a measurable increase in average order value as customers spent more time exploring the catalogue. The site has been live and actively maintained since 2019.