Online store for horse hobby fans based on Sylius

Our first task was to choose a solution that, on the one hand, would allow easy editing of the assortment and, on the other hand, would allow a significant increase in the efficiency of the site even under heavy load (the number of customers is constantly increasing). We decided to bet on a solution proven in earlier projects - Syliusa - an e-commerce based on the Symfony framework.

Focus on mobile users

While preparing for the work, we noticed how many users were trying to complete orders using mobile devices. Taking into account the shortcomings of the previous version of the store, we decided on a mobile-first approach, which resulted in a much more intuitive interface that always looks good - regardless of the device used by the potential customer.

We decided that the solution that would meet the client's requirements would be Sylius - a modern e-commerce tool that allows you to adjust its operation extremely precisely to the processes taking place in your business. Being aware of the growing traffic and the potential desire to expand the functions of the store with more modules, we were convinced that this was the right decision. We were not wrong.

Implementation of an affiliate system for store users

One of the unique features of the store is the affiliation mechanism. Each registered user of the system can become an affiliate partner of the store. It is enough for the administrator to give the appropriate rights to the user to generate a unique code, based on which orders are monitored.

The parameters of each cooperation are freely configurable and the program partners can monitor the effectiveness of their activities on an ongoing basis from the level of their profile.

Personalization of products in an online store

Hobby horse is a product that can be personalized in thousands of ways. Personalization can take place in terms of basic variations that affect the price such as size. However, there are also a number of modifications that are offered in the price of the product or for a certain surcharge. In the KHT Aria store, there are dozens of such personalizations and they can be applied to entire sets.

Therefore, it became extremely important to be able to intuitively select add-ons and then transfer the choices to the order management system. Thanks to the dedicated integration, we achieved the intended effect, enabling the splitting of products in orders into several cart items even though the base products of the same type were added to the cart.

Baselinker integration

One of the features added to the store was the integration of orders and products with the Baselinker system, which is a central point in the company's order management process. With this integration, all orders that have been placed in the store are exported automatically. The customer is able to view all the necessary information (payment methods and statuses, delivery methods, personalization, comments) in one place. This is important because sales are made on many different sales channels, not just the online store itself.

Content migration, UX improvements, SEO work on migration

There are currently about 200 core products in the store, with often dozens of configurable variations. So it became crucial for us to make the data migration as seamless as possible so that the work done so far for visibility in Google, would not be lost.

Therefore, before launching the new version of the online store, we conducted a thorough analysis of all current URLs indexed in search engines. All addresses were redirected accordingly, in accordance with the current addresses in the new system. After a few days of turbulence in indexing the pages, the store not only returned to its previous positions, but also began to climb to even higher positions after just about a week.

The first and key effect of the implementation was to significantly speed up the loading time of the store. Thanks to the use of mechanisms for optimizing image files, adjusting their size, we reduced the amount of loaded data several times. In addition, by using a dedicated solution, we removed the excess of unnecessary scripts and styles that are so common in WordPress/Woocommerce-based solutions. By adding minification mechanisms and using cached data storage, we made Pagespeed's performance scores immediately after publishing the site reach a level close to the maximum.

As a result of the actions described above and the increased emphasis on the store's content and code semantics, the store began to significantly increase its visibility in search engines just 2 weeks after the migration (the day this post was created). As a result, conversion increased from 2.5% to 3.3%. Comparing traffic from the best days before and after the system change, it increased by 54.85%.