Back to the trailhead Starbucks · Activation microsites

Built for virality. Engineered for the spike.

Client
Starbucks
Discipline
Web design · Web development · Failover architecture
Moments
Taylor Swift album drop · PSL launch · Khloud · Hannah Montana 20th
Scale
1.6M+ visitors · 99%+ uptime
Starbucks Khloud reward microsite on an iPhone

Starbucks runs some of the most anticipated activation moments in retail — celebrity partnerships, album drops, seasonal launches — where millions arrive in minutes and any failure plays out in public. We're the microsite partner they call for exactly those moments.

Different stars. Different mechanics. Same result.

From a Taylor Swift album-drop site that drew roughly 878K visits in 24 hours, to a Pumpkin Spice Latte launch that took 300,000+ in minutes, to reward drops for Khloud popcorn and Disney's Hannah Montana 20th anniversary — we design the experience, build it mobile-first, and engineer the edge so it stays fast and flawless under the surge.

More than 1.6M visitors across recent drops, 99%+ uptime, and not a dropped request when it mattered most.

Design the experience. Engineer the edge.

Every drop is a single screen with a single job, so the design has to earn attention in under a second and the redemption path has to survive a stampede. We prototype the moment, retouch product for the hero, and build the front end against a failover architecture that assumes the happy path will break — DNS, domains, and origin included.

Built for virality. Engineered for the spike.