Website Relaunch and B2B Online Shop with Shopify Plus

SHERA has been a leading specialist in dental technology for over four decades, offering approximately 500 products for the dental industry.
In our collaborative project with SHERA, the existing WordPress website and Magento online shop were set to be replaced by a new system. Our goal was to completely relaunch these two customer touchpoints using Shopify Plus.
Additionally, we aimed to integrate SHERA’s existing ERP system via Celigo. This integration would enable the calculation and offering of customer-specific prices and discounts.

The main challenge of this project was implementing custom solutions, such as live data calculations from an external system, into Shopify. On a platform like Shopify, maintaining stability and speed are always a top priority, which can present limitations due to dependencies on external systems.
We successfully overcame these limitations by strategically implementing the right software solutions and seamlessly connecting them to Shopify. This ensured that the required events were processed with absolute stability and high speed.
Additionally, the ERP needed to continue serving as the central data source, necessitating extensive integration with Shopify via Celigo.

Shopify Plus

Shopify Plus is a cloud-based e-commerce platform designed to efficiently run and scale online or B2B businesses. As a SaaS (Software as a Service) platform, it eliminates the need for hosting, system maintenance, and updates.
Shopify Plus offers high availability, performance, and flexible scalability. It enables easy and cost-efficient content and front-end customizations.
The functionality of the existing B2B shop was seamlessly transferred to the new Shopify shop. Additionally, we integrated content from the previous website, ensuring quick and easy content maintenance.

Frontend / Layout

• Content maintenance by SHERA, transferring the existing content from the old WordPress website.
• Choosing a suitable Shopify theme that aligns with the company’s requirements and project goals.
• Customizations:
  Customized header, product detail pages, and shopping cart to display additional data and account for surcharges and discounts.
  Implementing a multi-level category structure (e.g.: SHERAclassic → Plaster → Plaster Class IV), overcoming Shopify’s default single-level limitation.
• Translations and localizations: Ensuring the store is available in multiple languages and countries, such as German, English, and Spanish.

Interface:

By integrating various interfaces, we enhanced Shopify’s functionality significantly:

• Utilized Shopify apps to add features such as forms, wish lists, and more.
• Transferred company and contact information to the new system and mapped it within Shopify.
• Automatically redirect customers not already registered in the ERP system to Shopify for registration.
• Customized prices and Discounts:
  Display discount logic directly from the ERP system.
  Live calculation and display of personalized prices for each customer on product pages and in the shopping cart.
• Provided downloadable files for customers, secured through a proxy.

Celigo

The integration platform integrator.io from Celigo enables data exchange between different systems. In the Shera Shopify project, Celigo is used to connect Shopify with the ERP system Navision.

Integration via Celigo:

• Utilized the SOAP interface provided by Navision and connected it to Shopify’s GraphQL interface.
• Mapped entities such as categories, products, documents, and orders to the corresponding data in the target system.
• Enabled the transfer of discount information from the ERP to Shopify.

The combination of Shopify Plus and Celigo results in a robust, scalable, and user-friendly system that meets the specific needs of a B2B shop.

UX, Analytics & SEO

• UX: Designed a simple and intuitive user experience for both mobile and desktop.
• SEO: Redirect existing URLs to the new shop URLs. Implemented additional search engine optimization measures.
• Analytics: Set up e-commerce tracking and developed a comprehensive tracking concept.

Shera is a long-standing customer and we are delighted that we were able to successfully migrate the online store from Magento to Shopify in a short space of time.
The new tech stack with Celigo and Shopify will give Shera many opportunities for self-configuration in the future.
We are looking forward to the joint further development of the store.

SHERA Werkstoff-Technologie GmbH is a developer, manufacturer, and consultant in dental technology. Founded in 1983 in Lemförde, Germany, SHERA produces exceptional materials for dental laboratories worldwide. Their extensive product range includes over 500 items covering dental plasters, precision investment materials, model casting alloys, crown and bridge alloys, silicones, release agents, blasting agents, polishing agents, and cleaning agents.