Avoiding Complicated B2C Subscriptions

The request was to develop a multi-manufacturer B2C e-commerce platform for subscription-based products, that is easy to manage, maintain, and update. The existing site was no more than a brochure landing page, so the new site was a ground-up redesign and build.

Key Requirements

• The ability to offer subscription-based product purchases
• Direct servicing to B2C customers
• Selling products on behalf of manufacturers, drop-shipping
• Sell into new or emerging markets
• Ability to sell smaller or broken-up quantities (versus pre-packaged or crate sizes)

Additional Features and Considerations

• Redesign the site to better suit both manufacturers and clients
• Customer profile management (login, view purchases, update profile, etc.)
• InfusionSoft CRM integration
• Analytics implementation

In addition to the requirements and goals above, it was also necessary to implement a new hosting environment, setup CRM, analytics and tracking, and include improved SEO and management. With all these considerations in mind and in order to expedite development and simplify administrative training and use, WordPress and WooCommerce were chosen.

Build Process

For this build, production was relatively straight forward.

For hosting, Pantheon was selected for its multiple environments, branching, and Git support. This allows for deployments and the code repository to all be managed in one place. This also simplified maintaining a consistent database throughout the build process when working across multiple teams (developer - me, content managers, and designers).

Plugins and Content Management

In order to simplify client management process, the decision was made to rely on WordPress plugins where applicable. For this reason plugins were implemented for eCommerce subscriptions, CRM integration, drop-shipping support, SEO management, and analytics support.

Lastly a theme framework was chosen to allow greater accessibility to new developers as needed, and to reduce the dependence on custom code. A custom child theme was then developed to allow us to build on top of the chosen framework and to develop our designs accordingly.