Craftland

craftland.ch

Unifying Crafty Artisans From All Over the World

Business Area:

DIY
Arts and crafts
Gifts
Fashion and design

Services:

Location:

Switzerland

CraftLand is an online marketplace founded by Tomas Hunca, a digital entrepreneur from Switzerland. He aspired to build more than an e-shop, but rather a digital community to gather crafty artisans from his native country and the whole world. The platform was intended to sell hand-made exceptional items, promote them on a handy platform, and share their creative ideas with other people.

Challenge

Simplify vendor panels
Introduce design changes
Connect to Stripe Express
Integrate with Cookiebot
Safely upgrade to the latest version
Host the project in the Cloud

Implementing the Project

Simplifying Vendor Panels

Tom addressed us with a request to make the vendor panel more simple and easy to use for vendors. The task was to hide some tabs at the vendor backend sections in order not to confuse resellers with extra possibilities they do not need and add more security. Tomas also expressed his wish to show off certain customer details to limit the possibility of off-market sales.

We would also like to deactivate a couple of menu items and blocks in the vendor admin sections. At this point, we would like to make it as simple as possible. Some of the crossed-out features are also unnecessary at this stage, considering only one target market. On the other hand, we would like to keep the possibility to reactivate these features in the future - hence no hard delete.

Tom

That’s true. Default vendor panels are full of information and some functionality can be simply switched off or hidden. It depends on each and every case. In the case of Craftland, we introduced a range of changes to make the vendor panel clean and clear:

The “Editing tax“ page was reworked, and a new “Default tax“ checkbox setting was added. When the checkbox is enabled, it comes up on the “Add product“ page on the vendor panel.

We made ”Enabled” the communication setting for comments and reviews for creating new orders both in the administration panel and on the storefront by default. Some functionality in the “Add product“ and “Editing product“ pages was removed to declutter space and highlight only the core functions:

“Extra section“ was erased from the page:

The “Add-ons“ and “Subscribers” tabs became hidden for vendors to free them from extra functions:

We disabled some functionality for vendors to leave the full control on the marketplace to the administrator:

Now, the ability of approving/disapproving reviews on the “Reviews“ tab is switched off for resellers, and all the reviews can be seen on the page if only the marketplace administrator does not disapprove them.

The communication setting was made hidden on the Order page for the “Comments and reviews” section.

Design changes

The vendors’ storefronts were redesigned.

The vendor’s phone became hidden on the “Product View“ page.
We changed the Vendor general terms. Now, the block fetches data from the “Terms & conditions“ field in the “Editing vendor” page. If a vendor does not fill the field, then the block will hide automatically.

The “Terms & Conditions” link now redirects visitors to the vendor’s micro store page opened in a new tab. Besides, we changed some size settings:

The Vendor store banner size became more uniform. Now, it is 1,200 x 380 pixels at maximum.
Vendor logo is standardized as 340 x 340 pixels.
User profile images and Invoice log have now dimensions of 200 x 200 pixels.

If a smaller image is uploaded, it is stretched to the maximum size. The vendor profile has new fields that simplify communication between seller and buyer. As the marketplace is multilingual, we added a field with the reseller’s language and home country. We redesigned the whole page to make them seem like an all-in-on page telling a short story about each vendor. Vendors’ landing pages have comments and reviews.

Last but not least, we made one change to the layout, where the vendor logo is embedded into the banner. The sellers’ pages now can tell a story about their owners. Our team, About us, Delivery, and Warranty & Returns sections expanded the functionality to inspire trust in customers with complete information about vendors. Vendor pages look simple as one-pagers containing all the important information in a clear and attractive way.

Hiding inactive categories

Empty product categories needed to be automatically hidden from the storefront to declutter the interface. But, once a product is added, it should appear along with its category. When all the categories are deleted from a category, that category should disappear in order to not divert attention of customers. So, we implemented a special script in the automatic category hiding. It triggers when some product is created, updated, or removed. It checks the product categories, their parent, and child categories. If a category does not have an active product (product with “Active” status) and child categories do not have active products, then the script changes the category status on “Disabled” for the current category, their child categories and empty parent categories.

Connecting to Stripe Express

One more request of Tom implied connecting Stripe Express to his Multi-Vendor. He preferred Express to the Standard account as the former seemed more user-friendly and easier in operating both from the onboarding and the user dashboard point of view. Stripe Express enables to manage payout schedules, customize the flow of funds, and control branding. The service handles onboarding, account management, and identifies platform verification. We were asked to connect destination charges either. Destination charges allow taking fees and transferring remaining funds to all connected accounts of vendors. With Stripe Express and connected destination charges, handling funds is fully automated with the cash flow as follows:

After integrating Craftland with Stripe Express, all vendors’ profiles got links pointing to their Stripe accounts with the respective Express account details.

Integrating Cookibot

Cookiebot CMP enables a more deep compliance with privacy legislations using transparent data exchange, based on consent between end-users and the store. We integrated the service for Tom’s website. Now, entering the marketplace, you first accept all the required cookies. It makes using the website more safe both for users and the owner.

After integrating Craftland with Stripe Express, all vendors’ profiles got links pointing to their Stripe accounts with the respective Express account details.

Upgrading to the latest version

That was a good decision. We usually recommend upgrading to our clients so that they could benefit from new functionality, and remove any accumulated vulnerabilities. However, the process is rather complicated. All add-ons and customized features need to be transferred accurately to avoid any conflicts and noncompliance with the latest version. But upgrading is worth doing as it has lots of benefits. Apart from improved SEO and transition to the latest version of PHP (which is safer and better perceived by Google), you have a more responsive and mobile-friendly design, get all the redirects from old links and other fixes in case there were some bugs in the older version. We have a huge experience in upgrading and can make it safely.

When it comes to the upgrade, we are making many changes in the front and back-end. Upgrading to the new Multi-Vendor version would test the overall resiliency of the changes and code itself to see whether it all stays in place after a platform upgrade, or if there are any files that are overwritten, requiring to reapply any customizations. It is better to find any hidden surprises now, before opening the store, then later on, with live vendors and customers. Moreover, the store is approx. 6 months old and we might want to benefit from bug fixes and new features available in the new Multi-Vendor version.

Tom

Results

Beautifully designed functional storefront attracting new customers, great choices to cooperate with the marketplace and a simple dashboard for vendors. All of it functions in an almost automatic way implementing subscriptions for customers and sellers.