Cazoo Launches Ecommerce Site in Just 4 Months with Kin + Carta on AWS

Cazoo is a UK-based online marketplace that makes buying or selling cars more transparent and convenient. The company uses an ecommerce platform powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), as well as a Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless (MACH) architecture. Working closely with AWS Partner Kin + Carta, Cazoo launched its site in just four months. The end-to-end platform also integrates with solutions from AWS Partner Contentful to streamline the experience for Cazoo staff and customers alike.

A car can be an expensive, complex, and emotional purchase for many customers. If the process takes place entirely online, shoppers need to trust the ecommerce platform—from the first touchpoint to checkout. The Cazoo team knew it was crucial to find a partner that could help them design for trust and simplicity. Not only did the startup need a rock-solid platform, but it also had to meet a tight launch timeline. That called for a great deal of efficiency and quick decision-making. “To bring Cazoo to life, we needed an end-to-end product and technology partner that would help us to achieve our ambitious timeline to launch whilst building a modern startup at the same time,” said Jonathan Howell, chief technology officer at Cazoo.

In just four months, Kin + Carta, an AWS Partner helped transform Cazoo from a vision to an operational service, and in its first 12 weeks, the startup sold more than 1,000 cars. “The Kin + Carta team brought the speed and capabilities we were looking for and worked with us as true partners to make Cazoo happen,” Howell said. Kin + Carta brought a deep understanding of MACH architecture, helping the team ship its first version of Cazoo in three months.

By six months, they had released functionality for multiple payment options, including financing and part-exchanges. Kin + Carta connected Cazoo’s points of purchase to delivery processes, creating a smooth and secure checkout for high-value purchases. Today, Cazoo offers customers multiple touchpoints—via the website, mobile, and in person—to view thousands of cars, select custom product bundles, then receive their vehicle at their doorstep in as little as 72 hours.

As a startup with rapid growth targets, Cazoo needed a technical foundation that would enable it to launch and scale. Kin + Carta worked closely with Cazoo’s engineers to create a new reference architecture that followed the MACH approach and aligned with the AWS Well Architected Framework. For the ecommerce platform, they created a serverless, event-driven architecture, allowing Cazoo to model business processes directly in its system for maximum capacity and efficiency. The serverless nature, coupled with a data pipeline that uses Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), and AWS Lambda, helped accelerate backend processes for vehicle acquisition, merchandising, and refurbishment. In addition, dashboards for data visualizations provide valuable insights to support business operations and decisions.

“Our flexible strategy and ongoing engineering support not only optimized the product experience, but also enhanced Cazoo’s operational efficiencies and additional revenue opportunities,” said Martin Paton, chief technology officer at Kin + Carta.

As a modern ecommerce platform, Cazoo integrates with over a dozen third-party backend integrations, including AWS Retail Competency Partner Contentful. This enabled a self-service environment where Cazoo’s marketing and content teams could easily publish changes to the customer-facing site. Using Contentful has significantly cut down on time spent maintaining web pages.

Not only did Kin + Carta implement a MACH stack, but the partner also worked directly with key stakeholders to determine the skills and teams necessary to scale Cazoo for the long term. Kin + Carta helped ramp up Cazoo’s engineering teams on the new system and held trainings to bridge any existing skills gap. Cazoo worked hard to establish clear lines of communication as well as Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) processes to ensure high-performing teams would be able to execute future releases. To help the team release into production multiple times per day, Kin + Carta optimized around DevOps research and assessment (DORA) metrics, which also allowed for more scalable business operations.