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

    We needed a quick refresh of our website, which is heavily used by prospective and existing parents, staff and pupils. We needed to make sure that our site was flexible to appeal to all our end users and showcased our school. Working with Jem, I was able to quickly turn my thoughts into a brief, and then into a final product.

    Jem clearly knows what she is doing with WordPress, and her work showcases her considerable knowledge and no nonsense approach. I intend to use her again, when required, and would recommend her to others looking for a developer who knows WordPress inside out.

  • 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.

  • 5 5

    Jem developed our new website on time and to budget. She worked through the detail excellently and we got a superb end product that was optimised for web and mobile. We were highly impressed by her approach and knowledge. I would thoroughly recommend her to anyone wanting to embark on such a project.

  • 5 5

    I loved working through the process of developing my website. I concentrated on the words and imagery while Jem did her magic with the technology. I get so many compliments about our website and it’s definitely helped our business to grow quicker than we could have imagined. Being a lot of a technophobe, Jem’s calm assurance is always very much appreciated. I’d really recommend her.

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.