Case study: complex WooCommerce build with
Sage ERP integration
The Sanitaryware Company – commericial, education, and healthcare sanitaryware suppliers
Project Results
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The Sanitaryware Company saw improved conversions
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and increased average order value
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and increased trade account sign-ups
The brief
Shrewsbury-based digital marketing agency GrowRoom reached out to us to partner with them on a large end-to-end WooCommerce build for the high-performance commercial washroom retailer, The Sanitaryware Company.
With a large catalogue of premium products targeting both trade and retail customers across a variety of brands, categories and sectors, The Sanitaryware Company required more than a standard off-the-shelf platform to help them succeed.
Their existing site ran on a closed, proprietary platform owned by a third party. They didn’t own the code and couldn’t extend it the way the business actually needed, and any website changes had to be made through a piece of buggy desktop software.
Challenges
Requiring a modern, secure, performant website was only part of the brief for The Sanitaryware Company. Like many businesses of their size, their operations rely on an internal stock and customer management system – in this case, legacy solution Sage 1000. For the website to become an extension of their internal systems rather than just another brochure site, the platform needed to integrate closely with Sage 1000 and the company’s internal processes.
What we did
Working with design partner Naomi Adkins we designed and built a custom WordPress and WooCommerce website from the ground up.
Building a lean, bespoke hybrid Gutenberg theme we targeted conversion rates with ‘sticky’ call to action bars keeping add to cart actions in view at all times, better upselling and cross-selling through an improved product display page layout, improved customer experience with a custom product comparison tool, and extensive support for structured data (schema markup) to improve Google ‘rich results’ eligibility.
Leaning into WordPress’ extensive support for custom data and taxonomy types, we extended WooCommerce with additional categorisation of products by sector, industry, brand, and more. This allowed us to build an entirely bespoke faceted filtering system to allow customers to narrow down product selection, as well as support for taxonomy ‘intersections’ (brands by category, sectors by category) that gives The Sanitaryware Company the power to create standalone landing pages to continuously improve SEO.
We built a dedicated technical library, giving the customer a browsable document repository from which to source data sheets, fitting instructions, design files and more.
B2B and trade users are supported as standard, with simple moderated registration unlocking customer specific privileges such as purchasing on account, trade pricing, repeat ordering, and quote storage functionality.
To connect WooCommerce with The Sanitaryware Company’s Sage 1000 ERP system, we built a custom Node.js application that acts as a bridge between the website and a set of Microsoft SQL Server stored procedures. The integration works in both directions: product prices and stock levels are pulled from Sage into the website, while online orders are sent back to Sage. It also retrieves historical order data, allowing customers to recreate baskets from orders placed before the new website launched using our bespoke “Order Again” functionality.
The integration also supports important trade-account and payment processes. Before making payment on account available at checkout, the website checks the customer’s credit status and available credit in Sage. Trade customers can also enter an invoice reference, have its details and amount validated against Sage, and pay it online through Opayo’s secure card-payment flow.
Ultimately Better work on a “performance as standard” basis; our bespoke WooCommerce development process involves trimming out WordPress/WooCommerce tooling that is superfluous to requirements and The Sanitaryware Company build is no exception. Assets from the platform were stripped out and re-included on a “need to use basis”, with hand-written purpose-built alternatives used where possible.
Replatforming and migrating a large legacy ecommerce website is no small feat, and the migration planning and technical SEO were managed and supported by GrowRoom throughout. Working together we implemented their redirect plan, optimised URLs using bespoke rewrite rules, and implemented extensive schema markup.
Deliverables
- A bespoke WordPress site on a custom Gutenberg hybrid block theme, with WooCommerce integration, several custom plugins (trade pricing, product filtering, Technical Library data layer) and custom Gutenberg blocks
- Managed high performance hosting on Cloudways and Vultr, with multi-layer caching (full-page and Redis object caching) and Cloudflare integration including WAF and rate-limiting rules to mitigate the impact of scrapers and malicious bots
- Managed Node.js application
- Post-live redirects created to minimise rebuild risk on existing search engine rankings, and integration with marketing tools and Search Console as standard
- Ongoing WordPress maintenance and development support
Client feedback
I recently worked with Ultimately Better on a complete redesign of my e-commerce website, and the experience has been excellent from start to finish.
The project ran smoothly throughout, and the launch day was surprisingly stress-free – something that’s rare with a website relaunch! The whole team was fantastic to work with, particularly Jem and Stu, who were knowledgeable, responsive, and supportive at every stage.
Since launch, the ongoing support and post-launch work have been just as straightforward and efficient. We’re delighted with the end result: a modern, high-performing e-commerce website with an easy-to-use CMS that makes managing content far simpler.
Most importantly, we’ve already seen an increase in conversion rates, which was one of our key objectives. The new site also provides a much smoother customer journey, creating a better experience for our users.
I would highly recommend Ultimately Better to any business looking for a professional, reliable web design and development partner.
Louise Gannon
Marketing Manager, The Sanitaryware Company
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