Artisan Crafted is a U.S.-based business centered around artisan and designer products and resources for designers, architects, builders, and discerning homeowners. They provide the largest collection of artisan and designer products available in North America. Artisan Crafted is dedicated to bringing unique, handmade offerings to customers seeking exceptional and distinctive products.

Challenges

Artisan Crafted approached nopStation, a Gold partner of nopCommerce, with their previous website built on nopCommerce 4.20. The project presented several development challenges:

• Fragmented codebase and missing source code for multiple plugins.
• Extensive customizations to plugins that needed to be moved into plugins for the new solution.
• Streaming fragmented order service plugin requiring multiple enhancements.
• Enhancing storefront theme and UX to better showcase their product line and brand identity.
• Handling crawler and bot-related issues to mitigate performance penalties.
• SEO and analytics optimizations to integrate Google Analytics 4, Google Feed, and Pinterest Analytics.
• Enhancing discount plugins and remarketing features with fragmented workflows.
• Redesigning storefront UX along with the upgradation process.
• Upgrading existing plugins to nopCommerce 4.60.

Solution

To achieve development objectives for the project, plugin-driven development was utilized to implement custom features while also making extensive UX enhancements.

Upgraded to nopCommerce 4.60: The solution was upgraded to nopCommerce 4.60, bringing security and performance improvements, along with updates to previously used plugins.

Order service plugin refactored: The order service plugin was refactored to enable admin order placement, allowing admins to manage orders received via phone directly from the backend.

Variant sales report: A variant-specific sales report feature was added to analyze sales data based on product variants for better performance insights.

Enhanced discount plugins: The discount plugins were enhanced to include remarketing features, optimizing the marketing workflow.

UX Enhancements: Extensive UX improvements were made to modernize the storefront. Custom category banners, mega menus, and enhancements to product boxes were implemented. The Crimson theme was used to enhance the overall website design.

Category Page

The homepage, catalog pages, product boxes, and product details pages were optimized for better customer experience and brand identity alignment.

Storefront Mega Menu with Images.

Product Customizations: A custom plugin was developed to add new fields and details to product pages, such as ad banners, specification details, and marketing messages, which enhanced product showcasing.

Customizations in Product Details Section

Custom Advertisement Banners in Product Details Section

“View Collection” feature: A "View Collection" button was added to product pages, which links to a custom collection page for products from the same manufacturer. This boosted product discovery and cross-sales.

Product Collections page based on Manufacturer grouping

Product quote functionality: A custom product quote plugin was added, enabling customers to submit quotation requests on product pages, which could be managed by admins through the backend.

Product Quote Functionality

Google Analytics 4 and Pinterest Analytics Integration: A custom Google Analytics 4 plugin was developed with enhanced e-commerce tracking. Additionally, Pinterest Analytics was integrated to enable tracking of analytics events.

Server-Level Optimizations: Server-level optimizations were implemented to manage crawler and bot traffic, enhancing performance and security.

Results

• Upgraded to nopCommerce 4.60, ensuring enhanced security, performance, and scalability
• Streamlined codebase by migrating customizations into plugins, ensuring maintainability and scalability
• Revamped storefront with a modernized UX, including custom banners, mega menus, and optimized navigation
• Enhanced product visibility through custom fields and the “View Collection” feature, boosting cross-sales
• Simplified the quotation process with a custom product quote plugin, improving customer engagement
• Improved backend operations with a revamped order service plugin and variant-specific sales reports
• Optimized discount workflow with enhanced remarketing functionality
• Enhanced analytics capabilities with custom plugins for Google Analytics 4 and Pinterest Analytics
• Optimized server performance and security with crawler and bot management