Technical and visual relaunch for Westfalia with Shopware 6

Good things come to those who wait: Following the successful relaunch of the Austrian online store in February of this year, the original individual development of the Dutch online store of the Westfalia Group based on Shopware 6 has now also gone live in August 2023. The store shines both technically and visually in new splendor, without forgetting the original corporate design: The courage to use white space meets the familiar Westfalia color concept, so that loyal existing customers and interested new customers are addressed at the same time.

We designed the project as the central technical contact and checked and implemented it with external partners. Among other things, the focus was on connecting an enterprise resource planning system and the OMN PIM system from apollon via middleware to Shopware's REST API, which will allow product data as well as order and customer data to be synchronized promptly between the external systems and the store in the future. In addition, we focused on the planning, coordination and connection of the new newsletter system ELAINE from artegic AG in order to further expand and strengthen the bond with new and existing customers as well as interested parties. 

To increase user experience, product-specific Trusted Shop ratings and personalized product recommendations are dynamically displayed on the product detail page.

The Dutch store is designed for customers from both the Netherlands and Belgium. Accordingly, a complete translation of all content was important here - from CTAs to form labels or possible error messages for mandatory fields that were not filled out: All content was checked and replaced in the appropriate place. The Westfalia editorial team worked closely with us on this and we forwarded newly created Dutch translations to the responsible plugin manufacturers for official integration so that the entire Shopware community could participate.

Another special feature in this country constellation is the option for tax-free ordering by verified companies. Recording and verifying the sales tax identification number (VAT ID) in the registration process allows us to process transactions between the two EU countries without complications. In the old store, such orders always had to be prepared manually with regard to gross and net prices and the like - this new feature therefore relieves the Westfalia team enormously in daily business from now on.

The rollout of additional country and target group stores is planned for the coming weeks, so that all Westfalia stores will be running Shopware 6 by the fall. Once all countries are live, the upgrade to Shopware 6.5 is already scheduled, which promises new features and optimizations - so it will continue to be exciting in the third quarter of 2023! 

If you would like to know more about technical and organizational details, you can find further information on our reference project page.