B2B catalogue — a WordPress website with WooCommerce for Grollo.eu

Grollo.eu is a B2B catalogue WordPress website with a WooCommerce product catalogue for a glass products manufacturer working in the European market; it was built by CREATING.LV. As stated on grollo.eu itself, GROLLO products are designed, manufactured and tested by Stikla Serviss. The client needed a new site to present a wide product range clearly to business customers, to which online sales could also be added later. The project was handed over in 2023.

Business buyers choose products by technical and visual parameters, so the catalogue needed not only categories but also detailed product attributes by which products can be filtered. In addition to the catalogue, the site needed Download, Inspiration, News and Service sections, as well as a login.

CREATING.LV built Grollo.eu from the design to the finished site. Our work covered:

• the site’s visual design and user experience (UX);
• a WordPress website with a WooCommerce product catalogue and categories;
• detailed product attributes that work as filters;
• Download, Inspiration, News and Service sections, as well as a login;
• a language version solution with WPML;
• entering products in the catalogue;
• an adapted mobile version for use on a phone.

The site footer says “Page built by CREATING.LV”.

The catalogue is built with WooCommerce, allowing online sales to be added later. That is why the products are published and can be found, but the basket and checkout are not switched on. This approach allows a full catalogue to be published without yet having to sort out on the site the prices, payment and delivery terms that an online store requires.

WooCommerce is the WordPress e-commerce extension. The catalogue and a possible online store use one product database: if the company decides to sell online, products, categories and attributes do not have to be entered again. This is what sets a B2B catalogue WordPress website like this apart from a simple brochure site with product images, where the catalogue would have to be built from scratch to start selling. Adding sales here would mean switching on the basket and checkout, setting prices and connecting payment and delivery solutions to the existing catalogue. How WooCommerce extends WordPress and why it is also used for catalogues is explained in the article What is WooCommerce and how does it extend WordPress?.

Products are organised into categories, and each product has detailed attributes that also work as filters. This way products can be filtered by technical and visual parameters, and business customers quickly narrow the choice to products with the properties they need rather than browsing the whole category.

A WooCommerce attribute is a product property with a defined list of values. One attribute and its values are assigned to many products, so a filter for the whole category can be built on it rather than describing each product’s parameters only in text. For a new product, it is enough to assign attribute values, and it appears in the matching filter results.

We entered the products in the catalogue ourselves, so the client received a site with a completed catalogue rather than an empty structure. If a WordPress website with WooCommerce starts with a catalogue, it is worth agreeing the list of attributes before entering products: an attribute added later has to be filled in for every product already entered for it to appear in the filter results. On the current site, the category page has a Filter button and product cards without a basket.

On the B2B catalogue WordPress website, the visitor:

• chooses a product category;
• uses the filter to select products by the attributes they need;
• opens the product card with its parameters;
• if needed, moves on to the Download, Inspiration, News or Service sections.

This way the catalogue works as a product reference point for business customers: they can make their selection by parameters themselves before contacting the manufacturer.

On a manufacturer’s B2B site, buyers need not just a product list but also documents, news and service information. That is why, alongside the catalogue, we built separate sections, each with its own job.

• Download — a place for downloadable materials. On the current site, it offers, for example, instructions, technical specifications and e-catalogues — this is the company’s content.
• Inspiration — a separate section for inspirational content, kept apart from the technical catalogue.
• News — company news.
• Service — service information.
• Login — access for the site’s registered users.

These sections let business customers find both the product and the related documents on one site without writing a separate request to the manufacturer. For the manufacturer, this means a new version of an instruction or specification only has to be published in one place rather than sent to each customer separately.

The site was built for the European market. WPML is used on the site; the current version is in English. How to choose between WPML and Polylang is explained in the article WPML or Polylang for a multilingual WordPress website?.

WPML is a WordPress plugin for multilingual sites. With it, translations can be created for pages, products, categories and attributes, and each language version stays linked to the original. In a catalogue with attribute filters, this means that attribute and filter names can also be translated into another language, not just product descriptions. If the company wants to address a market in its own language, the language tool is already in place on the site, and a new language version can be added without rebuilding the site’s structure.

The visual design and UX were our work, as was the adapted mobile version. In our screenshot, the home page shows product groups that lead to the matching part of the WooCommerce catalogue, so visitors can start straight with the product line they need. On a phone, the categories and filter as well as the product cards and other sections can be used, so business customers can also open the catalogue outside the office. More about this part of the work on the page Web design and UX/UI.

For a manufacturer or wholesaler that first needs to present a wide product range to business customers in several markets, but may also need online sales in future. A B2B catalogue with WooCommerce lets you start with a website and move to an online store without changing platform or entering products again.

How we plan a site like this, from a catalogue to a possible online store, is explained on the page online store development. Another example of our product catalogues is the Stikla Serviss WordPress website with a catalogue, where downloadable technical information has been added to the catalogue.

• Online store development
• Website development

grollo.eu

This portfolio entry reflects the solution as delivered at handover. The current website may have changed.