Sonae Case Study | DBServices

About the client

Sonae is a multinational business group headquartered in Maia, Portugal. It is present in 90 countries and operates in several sectors, including retail, financial services, shopping centre management, software and information systems, media and telecommunications. It is the largest private employer in Portugal, with more than 50,000 employees.

Challenge

The Continente content feed operated isolated on the feed.continente.pt subdomain, creating navigation inconsistencies, SEO losses, and a fragmented experience for the user. Integration into the main domain was complex: the Azure backend had direct dependencies on absolute URLs, static assets, cookies, and authentication — making any direct migration high risk.

Solution

Implementation of a Cloudflare Worker as a reverse proxy, creating an intermediary layer that forwards requests to the original backend, rewriting URLs, cookies, and headers in real time — without any change to the existing backend. The solution was validated via POC with an automated crawler in Playwright, unit tests, and integration tests covering multiple scenarios.

Result

+25 pages validated with full navigation via the /feed path; Zero exposure of backend URLs to the user; All links, assets, and metadata adapted to the new domain; Performance maintained with minimal Worker impact; Pre-existing structural issues identified and resolved; Solid foundation for future evolutions: authentication, cart, and checkout.

Stack & practices