WooCommerce online store development for a craftsperson

CREATING.LV built the WooCommerce online store Sudrablapsa for the brand of a self-employed craftsperson who sews fur hats and collars by hand at home. The craftsperson needed an online store so that buyers could choose a product themselves, pay online and order delivery.

The store needed more than a product catalogue and a basket. The craftsperson wanted volume discounts that apply automatically, a customer account with purchase history and an easy way to contact the seller.

Buyers of fur products want to look at an item carefully before buying and understand what it is made of. That is why the product descriptions state the material, that the item is handmade and the available sizes, and each product has a large photo. Stating the size is especially important for hats: if the size is clearly visible on the product page, buyers have fewer reasons to exchange an item after receiving it.

The Sudrablapsa WooCommerce online store is CREATING.LV’s work, and in this project the online store for a craftsperson covered the whole journey from design to handover. We created the visual design and user flow, the store on WordPress and WooCommerce, and a version adapted for use on a phone. The project was handed over in 2021. Our work covered:

• the product catalogue and a home page with featured products;
• PayPal payment;
• shipping costs set as fixed amounts;
• volume discounts using a ready-made discount plugin;
• a customer account with purchase history and contact with the seller;
• language selection with GTranslate.

The Sudrablapsa site footer says “Lapu veidoja CREATING.LV” (Site built by CREATING.LV).

On the home page, each main product is shown in its own block with a large photo, the name, a short description and a “Buy” button. Products featured this way include, for example, a women’s silver fox fur hat, raccoon and rabbit fur ear-flap hats and a silver fox collar.

Below the product blocks, three icons briefly explain what matters to buyers: real fur, shipping, and a price that gets better the more you buy. The main menu has Home, Products, News and Contacts sections, as well as login, registration and the basket.

Volume discounts in the store are provided by a ready-made discount plugin — it is not our development. The plugin can apply a discount based on both the number of items in the basket and the purchase amount. The seller does not have to calculate the discount manually for each order, and buyers do not have to enter a discount code.

The two types of discount suit different situations. A discount based on the number of items encourages buying, for example, a hat and a collar together or several hats in one order. A discount based on the amount also works when a buyer chooses one more expensive item. Because the discount appears in the basket straight away, buyers see how much they save and can decide whether to add another item.

This logic supports the home page message “The more you buy, the better the price”. For buyers who want to purchase larger quantities, the site invites them to write and ask about wholesale prices.

Purchases are paid with PayPal. The store has no courier or parcel locker integrations: we set fixed amounts for shipping that are added to the order. For a small brand with a small product range this is a simple solution — there is no connection to a delivery system to maintain, and buyers see the total before paying.

PayPal is an internationally known payment method, so buyers from other countries can pay with it too.

A registered buyer’s account keeps their purchase history, so previous orders can be found in one place, for example before a repeat purchase. The purchase journey is the same for every product:

• the buyer chooses a hat or collar on the home page or in the Products section and opens the product page;
• they add the product to the basket — if a discount condition is met, the discount is applied automatically;
• they enter the delivery details and pay with PayPal;
• the order is saved in the purchase history in the buyer’s account.

For contacting the seller, the home page has a contact form with a reCAPTCHA check against bots. The footer has links to the privacy policy and the returns and exchange terms, and the top bar has social media links and language selection.

The News section publishes articles about fur products — for example, how to care for them, how to tell real fur from faux fur and what a silver fox is. The latest news is also shown on the home page, so buyers find answers to practical questions next to the products.

The visual design and user flow were our work: large product photos, short descriptions and a “Buy” button in each product block. We also built an adapted mobile version so that products can be viewed and ordered on a phone. The language is switched with flags in the top bar; translations are provided by the GTranslate plugin.

GTranslate translates the page content automatically, and at handover all the languages offered by the plugin were available. For a small store, this means foreign visitors can read the product descriptions in their own language, while the craftsperson does not have to write and maintain a translation of each text separately.

This online store is built on WordPress, WooCommerce, PayPal, GTranslate and a discount plugin. A WooCommerce online store lets you manage products, prices, orders and customer accounts in the WordPress admin panel, and articles are published in the same environment. More about the platform — in the article What is WooCommerce and how does it extend WordPress.

A small craftsperson’s store does not need a custom-programmed system: there are not many products, but reliable payment, clear shipping costs and the ability to add content yourself matter. A WooCommerce online store like this suits a craftsperson or small producer who sells directly and wants to encourage larger purchases with automatic discounts.

If you are planning a similar store, take a look at our online store development service — building online stores on WordPress and WooCommerce is one of our core areas of work. How to prepare products and their descriptions in the store is explained in the article Creating WooCommerce products. For choosing a payment method, the overview of the most popular WooCommerce payment integrations in Latvia will be useful.

• Online store development
• Web design

sudrablapsa.lv

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