Adobe Commerce migration and custom integrations for Ekstralys

WordPress blog integration

The blog is a significant part of Ekstralys marketing strategy. The old version of the online store was already integrated with a WordPress blog that had a number of third-party plugins and shortcodes for posting. The code of these elements was licensed so we couldn’t transfer it to the new website and even see what exactly they were used for.

Our developers tracked down all the pages with this code and analyzed the elements to understand what functionality they were responsible for. Then we built our own modules for the new site that had the same functions as the old ones. We also integrated the WordPress Page Builder for easier article publishing.

Forum update and migration to another server

Ekstralys has a large forum about vehicles in the Norwegian market. Their customers discuss the company’s products, technology in general, but also remote hobbies and travel topics. We upgraded this forum and moved it to another server.

• The BelVG specialists did an audit to find the weak points.
• We removed old user accounts that had not been used for a long time.
• The team removed unused elements from the code.
• The developers integrated Elasticsearch, which speeds up searches in large amounts of data.

All these improved the speed of the website and made it more comfortable for users.

Custom category page

After integrating the blog, the client requested to edit the category page and make it more user-friendly.

• The developers integrated and adapted the BelVG Infinite Scroll Module. The page loads gradually, which increases the speed of the website.
• A mouseover effect was also implemented. When users hover over a product card, they see the following image of the product. It makes the website more user-friendly allowing visitors to find out more about a product without opening the product page. It makes the website user-friendly and potentially increases the conversion rate.
• The BelVG team has added labels that show discounts on goods. The team set them up so they show either the percentage of the discount or the money saved, depending on what is chosen in the admin panel.
• We developed a module for editing price suffixes for different stores: Norway has, -, Sweden has :-, and Finland has €. Now Ekstralys can control how the suffix is displayed in the frontend for each store view. The system also controls symbols after the comma. For example, there are no cents in Norway, so the prices have to be integral, without commas and numbers after them.

Custom development for pages with configurable products

Work on the product page has been focused on encouraging the customer to purchase. We’ve made the following adjustments for the purpose:

• Ekstralys’ task was to set up automatic configuration selection. The BelVG developers created two ways to choose the default configuration for the product. The first one implies that the most popular configuration is selected automatically. The second option is for the shop managers to set up a standard configuration via the admin panel. This functionality ensures the customer sees the most popular configuration option and increases the chances of a purchase.
• The BelVG team also added functionality that shows the number of products left in stock for each configuration. If there are few products available, users who need the product will make a quicker decision to buy. For B2B shops the number is exact, B2C customers can only see if there are more than 100 items in stock.
• Our developers also set up the feature to change the product URL depending on the chosen configuration. It is beneficial both for SEO and marketing. Such links are indexed by search engines and create a good basis for promoting long-tail keywords. It is also easier for users to share the product as it allows opening already chosen options via links to configurable products.

Akeneo integration for the management of product data

Ekstralys offers its customers a wide range of products that are both simple and configurable. Since Ekstralys is a multi store where each store has its own range of products and pricing rules, the company decided to simplify the creation and management of products through a third-party service. We chose Akeneo for this. BelVG installed and customized the extension.

Import setup and synchronization in Akeneo

Challenge

When a manager added a product through Akeneo, they would have to fill in all of the product information fields. But not all attributes apply to each product. Filling all of them might have led to the issues in the category filter.

Solution

The BelVG developers added “0” and “no value” attribute options for the fields that do not fit for some products. So when the managers add products, irrelevant fields are left blank. We also ensured these values are omitted during the import. Because they could mess up filters and product pages.

Challenge

If the shop manager changed a field with product information, its URL got replaced by a new one. As Akeneo works directly with the database, its standard function implies that the extension creates a new URL automatically deleting an old one. So the original URL caused a 404 error. It was wrong from an SEO point of view because the original URL contained keywords, which were replaced by other characters in the new URL, and also indexing of many 404-pages has an impact on website ranking.

Solution

The BelVG developers changed that standard functionality. They made the system to compare the URLs that were already in the database and the ones just imported. If the URLs were the same the system didn’t do anything. If the URLs were different we created a new URL and formed a 301 redirect from the old URL.

Challenge

Since it is multistore, each shop has its own set of product attributes. It was mostly discounts, as Ekstralys offers different marketing campaigns for B2B and B2C online shops.

Solution

We implemented a custom product synchronization between the stores. So the managers could set the attributes in the admin panel for each storefront.