Background

As a leading solution partner of nopCommerce, we have our own website powered by nopCommerce to showcase products, services. Seeing the major performance and security improvements brought with nopCommerce 4.80, we decided that the time was right to upgrade our site from nopCommerce 4.50 to 4.80. Along with upgrading, we decide to use this opportunity to further enhance our website UX and functionality to reflect our business operations and philosophy. Our goal was to shift to a more service-oriented design that put a focus on our services, client success and showcasing how we deliver business value as a software solution provider.

Challenges

As part of our website renovation initiative, we set out to implement a range of new features and improvements aligned with our strategic goals. Through internal analysis and planning, we identified several key challenges to address during the project:

Transitioning to a service-oriented design:A major objective was to shift our homepage and overall site focus from a product-centric layout to a service-driven experience. As a software solutions provider, it was crucial to highlight our services more prominently while minimizing the emphasis on product listings.

Upgrading to nopCommerce 4.80: The first key step was migrating our existing themes, plugins, and custom source code modifications from nopCommerce 4.50 to nopCommerce version 4.80, ensuring full data consistency and compatibility.

Incorporating partnership program: As part of our philosophy of moving towards a service-based website, we looked to integrate a partnership section on our site that highlighted our existing partnerships and has options for users to sign up or reach out to us about potential partnerships.

Showcasing case studies & client success stories: To further augment our new service focused approach, and help highlight our past & ongoing client success stories and project deliveries across various eCommerce industries and beyond, we looked to implement a case study & projects section on our site that showcases our major projects.

Integrating product recommendations: To help enhance our product recommendations, we looked to better integrate product recommendations as part of the product details section.

Optimizing product review visibility: To better highlight customer feedback and insights regarding our products, we looked towards better highlighting the product review section on product details page.

Simplifying catalog navigation: To enhance the product discovery experience, we looked towards optimizing and reorganizing our catalog pages to better emphasize simplicity and usability.

Revamping helpdesk system: One of our major development goals was overhauling our ticketing system. We aimed to simply the ticket creation and alert journey for customers on the storefront. In addition, we also aimed to streamline our back-office operations for ticket assignment, management and reporting.

Showcasing client testimonials: To further enforce our client success and relationships, we looked to implement client testimonials feature to showcase reviews and testimonial quotes from our key clients.

Custom service topic pages: To better communicate the value of our services, we designed and implemented uniquely crafted topic pages for each service offering—focused on use cases, business benefits, and key differentiators.

SEO & performance enhancements: Alongside these functional improvements, one of our major goals was to improve site SEO through improvements in page speed as well as improve the on-page SEO of our products.

Our Solution

In order to execute our planned renovations and ensure a smooth migration to nopCommerce 4.80, we adopted a plugin-driven development approach. To implement the UX changes, we made customization on our existing theme and UX plugins. Here are some of the key highlights of our solution implementation.

Service-oriented homepage: We redesigned the homepage and key landing pages to better highlight our services over just products. For example, we used block-based layout and tailored call-to-actions. This helped showcase our core offerings and solutions, giving services center stage while also maintaining visibility of our relevant products.

Upgraded to nopCommerce 4.80: We upgraded the entire existing solution to nopCommerce 4.80. This process involved updating all custom themes and plugins while ensuring proper migration and integrity of our site data.

Product recommendation bar: To help better visualize product recommendations in the details page, we implemented a vertical recommendations bar to showcase recommended products on first scroll. As UX helped seamlessly embed recommended items within the product details page, enhancing product discovery and cross-conversion opportunities.

Image 1.2: Enhanced product recommendations

Case studies and project highlights module: We developed a case study feature on our site that lets us publish detailed case studies, complete with media, solution details, and project highlights.

Image 1.3: Projects & case studies listing

These case studies help highlight our various projects across multiple business domains and also showcase our problem-solving approach and business value minded development approach.

Image 1.4: Case study details

Client testimonial carousel:To help highlight our client testimonials and quotes, we added a testimonial carousel on our homepage called “What Clients says”. This section helps further enforce how to help our clients achieve business transformation and continue to adding value to their business.

Image 1.5: Client testimonials

Incorporated partner page with “partner with us” form: We implemented a partner’s section on our site that shows our existing partners along with a “Partner with us” form. This helped us better highlight our existing partners and our working process with them, helping mutually boost our partner’s profile.

Image 1.6: Partners section

Improved Page speed & Product SEO for 200+ products:We improved our page speed performance on desktop and mobile through optimizations in the theme as well as media management. To help enhance our on-page SEO curated SEO meta-attributes for over 200 of our products as well as adding structured data.

Custom Service Topic Pages: Each major service offering now has a dedicated landing page, designed with custom layouts that include value propositions, industry-specific use cases, service benefits, FAQs, and contact prompts. These pages significantly improve SEO and support targeted marketing campaigns.

Image 1.7: Topics page for development services

Streamlining catalog navigation: To streamline our catalog browsing & discover UX, we extended the filtering capabilities using AJAX-based filtering, enabling users to refine product listings by relevant tags & specifications attributes without full page reloads.

Image 1.8: Themes listing page

Developed a revamped helpdesk ticketing system: We completely revamped our ticketing system with a focus on usability, operational efficiency and reporting. Customers can now easily submit and track their tickets, while admins benefit from an improved backend with tagging, prioritization, and ticket assignment features for faster response times. And our new advanced reports help the to better monitor and manage the helpdesk process as a whole.

Image 1.9: Streamlined helpdesk ticket creation

Transforming for Impact: nopStation’s Upgrade Journey to a Service-Focused Experience Powered by nopCommerce 4.80 Enhanced product review UI: We redesigned our reviews UX to include visual ratings, and a more appealing layout that improves readability and usability as well.

Results

• Successfully migrated the full platform to nopCommerce 4.80, ensuring stability, performance improvements, and security enhancements.
• Revamped homepage layout to prioritize services with block-based sections and strategic CTAs, resulting in better service visibility and improved engagement.
• Optimized site speed across devices and enhanced SEO for 200+ products through better meta-attributes and structured data implementation.
• Added a media-rich case study feature to highlight projects, problem-solving approaches, and cross-industry capabilities.
• Introduced a dynamic “What Clients Say” testimonial section on the homepage, reinforcing trust and social proof.
• Redesigned review sections with visual ratings and cleaner layouts, enhancing trust and readability for users.
• Integrated vertical product recommendation bars and AJAX-based filtering, significantly improving product browsing and cross-selling opportunities.
• Created custom landing pages for each service with SEO-optimized content.