Magento 2 project and integration of Akeneo PIM for dodenhof

The family-owned company dodenhof operates northern Germany’s largest shopping center in Posthausen on an area of 125,000 square meters, as well as a second location in Kaltenkirchen. With the online store dodenhof.de, the company has been offering its customers a new digital service since 2020. The initial focus was on stabilizing the system. The further development of the frontend as well as the implementation of additional features and the integration of the PIM system Akeneo are further measures that we have implemented together with dodenhof.

Before the online store was stabilized, dodenhof had to contend with frequent downtimes. Particularly during special shopping events such as Black Friday or after discount campaigns, load peaks led to problems. After we took over the support of the store, our first priority was to eliminate these problems. This was all the more important because the company was not allowed to open its stores in the meantime due to Corona. We launched our joint project with dodenhof at the beginning of the Corona pandemic. Throughout the project, all appointments were held remotely.

To avoid downtimes of the store during peak loads and to improve performance, we transferred the store to a new hoster and provided it with monitoring.

In a second step, we modernized the frontend in cooperation with dodenhof to increase the conversion rate. At the same time, the latest Magento version was installed to apply up-to-date security patches.

Magento Open Source

dodenhof.de is an online store based on the Magento Open Source e-commerce system. Due to our many years of experience and distinctive expertise with Magento, we were able to quickly identify weaknesses in the stores and develop suitable solutions. This includes, among other things, the application and continuous compliance with Magento coding standards in order to be able to perform future upgrades with little effort.

Hosting & Monitoring

In cooperation with our partner Maxcluster, we first migrated the system to new hardware, benefiting from the managed hosting approach incl. the new hardware. Failover server. Due to increased demand, the system was migrated to a Cloud Web Cluster in 2021, which has a load balancer. This way, the load is distributed among several servers. This approach allows us to scale resources such as memory and processors as needed during peak loads.

Akeneo PIM

In order to provide high-quality, complete and consistent product information for the online store, the Akeneo PIM system was introduced and connected to the Magento system. Akeneo was first introduced in the free Community Edition and later upgraded to Akeneo Enterprise Edition. The company’s extensive product data can thus be enriched and managed using various rules. For example, the product attribute “manufacturer” can automatically move a product to a specific store category. In addition, product images are managed with Akeneo’s Assets feature.

Redesign of the frontend

The redesign of the frontend was developed together with dodenhof. We were able to provide consulting support here with our many years of experience in UI design for Magento stores. The implementation was carried out entirely by our experienced developers. The frontend is continuously optimized in cooperation with the dodenhof team. The focus here is on improving the conversion rate. In this context, the standard checkout in particular was also rebuilt to ensure a user-friendly shopping experience and minimize the abandonment rate.

Connection to SAP

Working with integration partner Scheer PAS, we connected the SAP, Akeneo, and Magento systems to exchange product data between the different data sources and systems in a fully automated way via APIs. In order to guarantee a smooth process, we use Magento’s asynchronous interface, which is made possible by the use of RabbitMQ.

As a technical service provider, we have significantly improved both stability and data management. With the new frontend, dodenhof.de has been given a modern makeover without losing the fashion house’s identity. We are looking forward to the further cooperation with the dodenhof team, which worked very well in human and professional terms during the entire project phase – despite the forced remote situation.

From a small general store to the largest shopping center in the north – dodenhof has been impressing its customers with an incomparable selection and great services for over 100 years.