Just Drinkz
A production-grade e-commerce platform for Lagos's premium spirits delivery brand — built for speed, security, and the Nigerian market.
A production-grade e-commerce platform for Lagos's premium spirits delivery brand — built for speed, security, and the Nigerian market.
The project
Just Drinkz is Lagos's go-to destination for premium spirits delivery — same-day, curated, and reliable. When they came to MOW Designs, they needed a platform worthy of the product: fast, secure, and built for the Nigerian market's unique challenges.
We delivered a full-stack e-commerce experience on React 19 with an AWS backbone — S3 for asset storage, CloudFront CDN for low-latency delivery across Nigeria, Cognito user pools for authentication (Google OAuth + phone OTP), and Lambda@Edge for edge-level security hardening.
The result is a platform that loads fast even on variable connections, handles the full purchase journey seamlessly, and gives the Just Drinkz team a scalable foundation to grow into.
Capabilities
Deliverables
The challenge
Nigerian connectivity is unpredictable. The platform had to load fast on 3G connections, cache intelligently via CloudFront, and never drop a user mid-checkout.
With age-gated products, we needed robust identity verification — supporting email, phone OTP, and Google OAuth — without creating unnecessary friction.
International processors have poor card success rates in Nigeria. We built checkout around Paystack, with full webhook handling and order state management.
Lambda@Edge policies protect the storefront from bots and bad actors — rate limiting, geo-filtering, and request validation before any origin hit.
How we built it
Audited the client's existing setup, defined the product catalogue schema, and designed the full AWS infrastructure before touching any UI.
Built a complete prototype covering all product states, cart flows, and checkout steps. The design became the engineering specification.
Optimistic UI updates, skeleton loading states, and a custom cart system built for low-latency interactions — even on slower connections.
Node.js/Express API backed by PostgreSQL, deployed behind CloudFront. Cognito with Google OAuth and phone OTP as a first-class auth option.
Lambda@Edge policies, HTTPS enforcement, Paystack webhook verification, and a full UAT cycle before launch day.
Key architectural decisions
Full control over CDN caching, edge functions, and cost at scale. CloudFront gives sub-100ms TTFB from Nigerian PoPs — something Vercel/Netlify can't match for this market.
Not all Nigerian users have Google accounts. Phone-based OTP became a first-class login option, not an afterthought.
Paystack's Nigerian bank coverage and card success rates outperform international processors by a significant margin for this market.
The outcome
The platform launched on schedule and has been in continuous production since. Just Drinkz can handle order spikes without infrastructure issues, and even users in cities with limited connectivity get a fast, reliable experience thanks to the CloudFront layer.