I helped Ken (owner of Vanagain.com, seller of Volkswagen van parts) migrate from an obscure and now-defunct e-commerce solution to WordPress in late 2014. This project involved a migration of 3400 product entries from a basic spreadsheet into WooCommerce. Product heirarchy, tags, categories, taxes and shipping needing to be established, and a customized search engine created to allow customers to shop parts according to which year and what type van they owned. The site was simple in design but the UX was clean and it was accessible; I had spent the project budget on a huge migration.

After launch on WordPress, I urged Ken to flesh out product descriptions and use larger-resolution photographs in order to enhance the customer experience and sales, as well as SEO. He decided to instead migrate the site to Laravel. He has a glossy new look with a lot of flashy CSS animations, but I fear that won’t help him compete with GoWesty, another van parts dealer with a no-nonsense website and thorough product descriptions.

Content is king, after all.