Copper Sinks Online is a U.S.-based business concern providing the largest collection of handmade, unique items in North America, featuring contemporary furnishings, home décor, and custom pieces like range hoods, kitchen island lighting, vanity sinks, faucets, and made-to-order bathtubs. They are committed to exceptional quality, customization, and customer service sets us apart from big-box stores.

Challenges

The client approached nopStation, a Gold partner of nopCommerce, with their previous website built on nopCommerce 4.20. The original website had a fragmented codebase, compounded by missing source code for several plugins. This made upgrades and development particularly complex. nopStation team meticulously analyzed the codebase and existing site to determine the necessary functionalities for upgrades and redevelopment.

The previous site included numerous heavy customizations layered directly on top of the nopCommerce source code. The client’s existing order service plugin allowed order placement from the admin panel but suffered from fragmented workflows. The site experienced significant performance issues due to poorly managed crawlers and bots.

The client’s business relied heavily on Google Analytics and tracking for campaigns and needed support for Google Analytics 4, Google Feed, and Pinterest Analytics to align with their marketing goals.

Solution

To meet the project’s development goals, an in-depth analysis of the client’s business requirements was made and an effective development strategy was defined. Leveraging plugin-driven development, nopStation implemented custom features and made significant UX enhancements.

Upgrade to nopCommerce 4.60: The solution was upgraded to nopCommerce 4.60, delivering improved security and performance. Additionally, all previously used plugins were updated for compatibility with the new version.

Migration of Customizations to Plugins: The previous solution relied heavily on source code customizations. To ensure future upgradability and maintainability, these customizations were identified and moved into plugins, optimizing the codebase for better scalability.

Advanced Product Customizations: A custom plugin was developed to support advanced product customizations. This plugin introduced new fields and details on product pages, enabling features like ad banners, specification details, marketing messages, and more. This enhanced the effectiveness of product showcasing.

Addition product specification in product box

Customizations in Product details

Streaming Order Processing: The existing admin order service customization was refactored into a plugin. This enabled order placement directly from the admin panel, allowing admins to manage orders received via phone, including processing payments, through the backend.

Custom Product Quote Functionality: A product quote plugin was developed to streamline quotation management. This feature allows admins to enable quotation functionality on a product level, adding a "Request Quote" button to product detail pages. Customers can submit quotation requests, which are managed by admins via the backend.

Enhanced Promotions and Remarketing Features: In addition to upgrading the discount plugins to nopCommerce 4.60, workflows were streamlined and remarketing functionality was added.

Enhanced Analytics Integration with Google Analytics 4 and Pinterest: A Google Analytics 4 plugin was developed with enhanced e-commerce tracking to provide accurate insights into website engagement. Additionally, the default Google Feed plugin was customized to generate optimized product feeds for Google Ads campaigns.

To leverage Pinterest analytics, a dedicated Pinterest analytics plugin was developed that sends analytics events to Pinterest, enabling the client to effectively utilize Pinterest’s tracking and insights services.

Technical SEO Optimizations and Server-Level Crawler Management: Server-level optimizations were implemented to manage bot and crawler traffic. This included reducing the impact of harmful bots, optimizing resource usage, and enhancing security against bot attacks. These changes ensured improved site performance and stability.

Technical SEO performance of the site was enhanced through extensive analytics optimizations and implementing website schema data in appropriate JSON-LD schema through a custom JSON-LD data plugin.

Results

• Upgraded solution to nopCommerce 4.60, delivering improved security and performance
• Boosted phoned-in order conversions through direct order placement from the admin panel
• Streamlined promotions and marketing capabilities to improve workflows and boost conversions
• Enhanced product visibility and discovery with customization collections, ad banners, and marketing messages
• Streamlined quotation process for customers and admins through product quotation functionality
• Google Analytics 4 with enhanced tracking and optimized Google Feeds for ad campaigns
• Pinterest Analytics to track analytics events and leverage Pinterest insights
• Reduced bot traffic, enhanced security, and site performance under load with server-level optimizations
• Enhanced technical SEO by providing structured data in JSON-LD format with optimized schema
• Refactored source code customizations into plugins to ensure scalability and maintainability