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OpenCart to WooCommerce migration and custom ordering framework for an industrial packaging supplier.

Established in 1983, Patrico is a Gloucestershire based industrial packaging supplier.

The business supplies plastic and metal containers, drums, jerry cans, tins, IBCs and UN approved boxes to customers across a wide range of industries. Orders range from a handful of bottles to full pallets, and the way a customer buys varies massively depending on their sector and volume.

Challenge.

Patrico's old site sold had become difficult to manage and did not have the flexibility to support their next phase of growth.

  1. The platform decided how customers could order. Packaging is bought in packs or pallets, but the OpenCart site could not properly reflect that, so customers were left doing mental arithmetic to work out what they were actually ordering, or giving up and phoning instead.
  2. The business had been shaped around the software. Over time, decisions about products and ranges were being made with one eye on what the platform would allow rather than what customer needed.
  3. No room to expand the range. Adding new product lines meant working against the platform rather than with it, which puts a ceiling on growth for a supplier whose whole proposition is breadth of stock.

Solution.

A custom ordering framework built around how packaging is actually bought. We developed a framework that lets customers purchase in packs or pallets, whichever makes sense for that product and that order. The quantities on screen match the quantities in the warehouse, so nobody has to translate between the two before they can buy with confidence.

A CMS structured around the business, not a business structured around a platform. The site was rebuilt so the way products are organised, described and sold follows Patrico's commercial logic. That principle drove every structural decision in the build.

Migration handled as an SEO project. Moving from OpenCart to WooCommerce put years of accumulated search visibility on the line. URLs, redirects and technical SEO were planned as part of the migration rather than checked afterwards, which is why visibility grew through the transition instead of dipping.

Built to keep growing. New product lines and new ranges are added to the site as a normal part of trading rather than as a development project. Patrico now has flexibility the previous platform never gave them.

Result.

The commercial change was immediate. In its first full quarter after launch, the new site was averaging monthly sales more than 30% above what the business had previously counted as a strong month.

Search performance moved with it. Quarterly impressions grew from 300,000 to 450,000 year on year, and click through rate rose 16.5%, so more of the people seeing Patrico in search results are now choosing to click. More visibility, converting better, on a site that lets customers order the way they were always going to order anyway.

The flexibility is the part that keeps paying. As the range grows, the platform grows with it, which is exactly what the old one could not do.

30
%

increase in average monthly sales in the first full quarter after launch, measured against the business's previous best month.

52
%

increase in quarterly search impressions year on year, from 300,000 to 450,000 in the first full quarter after launch.

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