Jem Turner jt@jemturner.co.uk +44(0)7521056376

Dorothy & Theodore Multi-Vendor Marketplace

Design and custom WooCommerce development for large multi-vendor marketplace

Dorothy and Theodore website on macbook pro

The Dorothy & Theodore team approached me with an existing multi-vendor marketplace website built on the CS Cart platform. They were having difficulties with a few technical things but making no progress on getting them fixed. After chatting about their problems, and their ongoing requirements, we put together a re-platforming plan to move the site away from CS Cart and across to WordPress and WooCommerce, utilising an existing WordPress plugin to provide the required marketplace functionality.

Taking advantage of the platform migration, the Dorothy & Theodore team also opted for a redesign. We designed a fresh new WordPress theme to accompany the WooCommerce development, featuring existing branding assets and colours but with a more consistent look and feel across the site; the redesign brought together both the e-commerce and community/blog elements, solidifying the browsing and buying experience as one continuous journey.

Migrating from CS Cart to WordPress wasn’t without its pitfalls. CS Cart repeatedly fell over when we tried to extract vendor and product data from it, which left us having to export information in tiny batches bit by bit. To process this data in a format that WordPress, WooCommerce and the multi-vendor platform understood meant writing a custom import utility and gradually feeding our data in.

To give the same level of product customisation to customers that the vendors were used to and expected from WordPress, I wrote a bespoke WooCommerce add-on to provide the ability to create “custom fields” on products, allowing them to choose product personalisation options that were independent from price-affecting WooCommerce-based variations.

Late in the development I realised that the multi-vendor platform we’d chosen was impacting upon WooCommerce filters, preventing the bespoke personalisation functionality from working, so re-platformed again to an alternative multi-vendor solution. This additional work meant the project didn’t meet its original deadline, but overall gave a much better experience for the vendor, the customer and the admin team and meant the bespoke WooCommerce plugin development worked as it was supposed to – a worthy trade-off.

If you’d like to chat about custom WooCommerce development, or how I can improve your WordPress website, get in touch.

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Why hire Jem for your WordPress project?

  • 5 5

    After having numerous difficulties with another website designer, we asked Jem to provide some assistance. Jem managed to overhaul our website and provide a user friendly site that we are thrilled with. She is extremely thorough, and knowledgeable – which gives us confidence that we are getting the best care for our site. She has provided support throughout challenging times when we have needed information to be readily available for parents. All we can say is, we are more than happy, and fully recommend Jem. If you would like any further information please do not hesitate to contact me.

  • 5 5

    When I needed a new website, that’s where Jem came in and did a great job:

    – Quickly understood what I do for a living, where a website fits in my marketing and what kind of website would work for me (and what wouldn’t)
    – Built a website that does exactly what I need
    – Jumped in immediately when a hacker tried to do their worst
    – Taught this trembling technophobe to embrace WordPress when it all changed

    Jem is knowledgeable, positive, patient and a joy to work with. Highly recommended

  • 5 5

    Jem’s knowledge and experience of the WordPress platform has proved invaluable to Source in the time that she has been working with us. Her ability to quickly and efficiently build a WordPress website from the visuals provided is second to none – as is her willingness to support our in-house development team with their WordPress projects. Source would have no hesitation in recommending Jem to anyone looking for an experienced WordPress developer for their project or agency.

  • 5 5

    Jem has been unflinchingly helpful with every stage of the development of the Albion site, and has helped us keep it up to date and functioning effectively, solving problems as they have arisen. I am a techno-phobe, but Jem has been unfailingly supportive, helpful, always friendly and efficient. Also her rates seem really good value, but don’t tell her I said so.

Why I love working with WordPress

I've been using WordPress since the heady days of version 1.0 and developing WordPress websites commercially since version 1.5 (released in 2005!)

Open-source

Free software: now and forever. No crazy license fees or contract tie-ins. Pay only for your site development.

Massive user base

Over 75 million sites are powered by WordPress, with thousands of developers worldwide contributing to core development & free plugins.

Infinitely flexible

WordPress can be anything you want it to be: from a simple blog to a full e-Commerce platform utilising WooCommerce, and more.