The Castlemaine Rod Shop and Waddingtons is a long-standing business specializing in providing auto parts in Australia. Over 35-year-developing, they have supplied over 6000 products for a wide range of cars across the Australian market.

Ecommerce system upgrading demand for achieving business growth

Previously, Rod Shop operated an ecommerce website using Magento 1 to sell products. However, they needed to improve their existing system for business expansion to increase the product sources with more appropriate running processes. This upgrade is also a requisite for Rod Shop to transform into a comprehensive ecommerce system.

Besides, Magento 1 was no longer meet the current operating system of many businesses. Additionally, Magento officially announced that it would stop updating and developing Magento 1.x versions, which would not receive any further updates, including bug fixing, security, and new features. Instead, the new Magento 2.x version owned many vital advancements in bug diagnosing and fixing. In addition, this latest version has also been constantly developed more ecommerce features to support businesses optimally.

Moreover, continuously updating and applying cutting-edge technologies allowed businesses to meet market demand and the digital economy quickly. On the other hand, old-fashioned technologies would be a considerable barrier to any business’s sustainable development.

Therefore, after carefully considering ecommerce solution providers based on Magento 1 experience for many years, Rod Shop decided to partner with SECOMM to upgrade the existing 1.x system to the 2.x version.

Migrating the entire system from Magento 1 to Magento 2 to improve performance

To develop a more effective and sustainable online business model for Rod Shop, SECOMM made a complete migration process of the existing data and function systems to Magento 2.

The biggest problem in platform migration is data and essential functions. Rod Shop had an extensive product range with complex categories and attributes. Product data was a critical component of any ecommerce system that needs fully and accurately synchronized. Also, the function system needed integrity assurance during the migrating process, including all default Magento functions and the extensions integrated into the website.

Simultaneously, to enhance the Magento 2 performance, we combined DigitalOcean to set up the server and more necessary software.

Magento 2 key-features optimization

Category system and detailed product page

– About category: Rod Shop possessed a diverse product range with complex structures. Therefore, SECOMM designed essential functions for search engines to process, access data quickly and accurately. SECOMM also optimized the sorting and filtering feature based on product attributes: brand, location, part, function, and price, allowing customers to search quickly and accurately, optimizing the customer experience.

– Customize displaying in detailed product pages: with the product attribute complexity, SECOMM also built a full displaying page for every product with different information structures and developed attribute customized functions allowing customers to view and select appropriate products.

Payment gateway system

Besides popular payment gateways such as VISA, Mastercard, PayPal, SECOMM has integrated Afterpay and ZipPay. Customers could quickly process the “buy now, pay later” option with an interest-free installment suitable to their needs and spending plans when using these two payment gateways.