Project MerchandiseSustainable merchandise
Project Merchandise
A ground-up WordPress rebuild for a supplier of sustainably sourced merchandise: hand-coded blocks, a bespoke enquiry system and Redis caching in place of themes and page builders.
Project Merchandise supplies organisations with sustainably sourced merchandise. The team came to us for a complete redesign and rebuild of their ecommerce website, with a clear aim: position the company as a leader in its sector.
Their original site leaned on pre-made themes, page builders and third-party plugins.
None of it was really theirs.
We rebuilt it from scratch.
The build
The new site runs on a custom block library for WordPress’ Gutenberg editor, every block written by our own developers. No page builders, no pre-made themes.
The case for custom website development is practical. A lean, optimised codebase keeps the front end fast for customers, and the editing experience stays simple and intuitive for the administrators running the site.
A bespoke enquiry system
Over the past few years, as Project Merchandise has expanded, we have kept building alongside them. One notable addition is a product enquiry system, coded by our developers rather than bought off the shelf, and tailored precisely to Project Merchandise’s needs.
Customers can:
- Select multiple products
- Customise each one, with details such as logo uploads and quantities
- Submit everything as a single, comprehensive enquiry for their branding requirements
Staying fast as the site grows
As the business has grown, so has the website. Unchecked, that could have meant slower load times. To prevent it, we implemented Redis caching: popular pages and products are cached and load near-instantly as customers move between them.
We also worked with Project Merchandise to integrate an external search engine. Search results come back faster, and key product categories and featured items can be highlighted during seasonal events.
