Culture Kings Shopify & Laravel Websites

Overview

In 2016 and 2017, Jonathan worked in-house at Culture Kings as a senior web developer. Over that time the brand's online revenue overtook all of their Australian stores, driven by the in-house team's work on the online store and the brand's investment in Facebook advertising.

As part of a small team, Jonathan helped redesign and rebuild the website on Shopify Plus, and develop a Laravel middleware application that synced products from their Infor M3 ERP to Shopify. Staff used the middleware to add marketing content such as images and product descriptions before products went live. Shopify was still fairly new in the APAC region at the time, and Culture Kings was a significant client that pushed the platform to its limits.

Challenges

1. Magento Performance: The Magento site struggled with growing traffic. Caching issues were common, and during big sales some customers hit database errors at checkout, which meant lost sales.

2. Shopify's Limits At The Time: Shopify didn't yet support features Culture Kings needed, such as product bundles, multi-buy promotions and detailed product filtering.

3. ERP Product Data: Products were managed in the Infor M3 ERP and needed marketing content added before going on sale online.

Solution

Key deliverables from the in-house team:

1. Magento To Shopify Plus Migration: Moved the online store from Magento to Shopify Plus for better performance and scalability.

2. Website Redesign: A full redesign of the online store.

3. Laravel Middleware & ERP Integration: A Laravel application that synced products from Infor M3 to the Shopify Plus stores, where staff added images and descriptions first.

4. Custom Promotions: Shopify Scripts (written in Ruby) for promotions Shopify didn't support at the time, such as 2 for $100 and free gifts on orders over $500.

5. Product Search & Filtering: Before Algolia was an option, a full product tagging system powered search and filtering by category, type, colour and more.

6. Product Bundles: Custom bundles, which Shopify didn't offer natively at the time.

7. 'NFS' Products: A 'Not For Sale' code that allowed exclusive products to be added to specific carts only.

8. Product Videos: Compressed product videos that play when hovering over product images.

9. Marketing Integrations: Ad and analytics platforms connected with custom events, plus Klaviyo for email marketing.

Key Features Implemented:

• Magento to Shopify Plus migration
• Laravel middleware syncing products from Infor M3
• Product content management before sync to Shopify
• Custom promotions with Shopify Scripts
• Product search and filtering with a custom tagging system
• Custom product bundles
• 'Not For Sale' exclusive products
• Product videos on hover
• Ads and analytics custom events
• Klaviyo integration

Results

1. Successful Migration: The move to Shopify Plus gave Culture Kings a more modern design, a better user experience, significantly higher sales and lower bounce rates.

2. Online Store Became The Biggest Channel: Together with a strong digital marketing strategy, the online store went on to contribute 60% of Culture Kings' revenue.

Project Services Breakdown

• Shopify Plus Migration & Development
• Online Store Redesign
• Laravel Middleware Development
• Infor M3 ERP Integration
• Shopify Scripts & Custom Promotions
• Klaviyo & Analytics Integration

Technology Stack: Shopify Plus, Shopify Scripts (Ruby), Laravel, Infor M3, Klaviyo, AWS

Services provided

Website

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