Launch of the IMparat Online Shop

Digitising the product range and business processes using Shopware 5

When IMparat Farbwerke approached us in 2018, it already had a simple corporate website which served merely to inform customers. But IMparat now wanted to have more than just an online presence and was looking to sell products directly online as well. Our objective was to design and develop a modern, new website with a built-in online store and a high degree of individual design freedom. This new website was to fit seamlessly into the company's existing digital infrastructure.

IMparat had no specific preferences regarding the technologies to be used, and entrusted Marketing Factory with selecting the most appropriate system.

zum IMparat Onlineshop

Client	IMparat Farbwerk Iversen & Mähl GmbH & Co. KG.
Project duration	2019–2022

Discover the project from the perspective of:

Change perspective Marketing and sales Development and technology

Shop-Technologies

For the implementation of the IMparat online shop, we decided to use the Shopware shop software. Of all the candidates, Shopware offered the best-performing solution for the number of items to be expected, and most of the additional feature requests were already available as a plugin. An additional plus point was that the basic interfaces to the most important services (in particular to the PIM and the ERP, but also to the newsletter service or the payment service provider) already exist. The shop template and design can also be adjusted according to individual wishes in order to meet the high design requirements of the customer IMparat.
Shopware also convinced the customer with its particularly simple, intuitive usability for users and high development potential thanks to a large number of available plugins.

Shop-Technologies

The implementation of the IMparat online shop is based on the open source solution Shopware in version 5.7. An individual payment plugin from the payment provider Adyen is used to process payments and returns.
IMparat relies on DHL for the shipping of goods – accordingly, all shipping information was implemented via the existing DHL plugin, as well as the returns processing including label generation as a self-service in the shop.

CMS-Technologies

The products manufactured by IMparat have a character that requires a lot of explanation. The properties and use cases are probably not fully known to most users and require further information. The diverse range should therefore be enriched with additional content that supports customers in product selection and application. Since Shopware's own CMS functionalities could not meet all requirements after a detailed check, we decided together with the customer for a seamless integration model and used a TYPO3 CMS as a content source. The decisive factors in the decision for TYPO3 were in particular the convenient handling of localizations, the high level of user-friendliness for users and the high scalability. In this way, the creation of the basic content could be started very quickly and the range of functions could be successively expanded over time.

CMS-Technologies

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

With the use of TYPO3 in combination with Shopware, we lay the foundation for successful search engine optimization on the IMparat website. The following still applies on the web: content is king! And with the TYPO3 CMS, any amount of content can be presented both in standardized and in individually developed content elements. All necessary metadata can be edited in the page properties and editors can see at any time how individual pages are performing under SEO-relevant aspects. Depending on the rating, suggestions for improvement are automatically issued that are relevant for a user- and search engine-friendly revision.
The responsive template from Shopware also ensures optimal output on mobile devices. If a shop URL is renamed at any time, a redirect from the old to the new URL is automatically created. When designing the URL, Shopware also offers effective options for achieving an optimal structure and length.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

TYPO3 and Shopware bring optimal technical requirements to enable effective SEO work. Of course, title, description and keywords can be maintained individually in both instances. The Yoast extension in TYPO3 tells editors in the backend how individual pages perform and where there is still a need for optimization. The generation of URLs can be controlled and redirects are created automatically when renaming pages or articles or when restructuring page trees. This way the link juice is passed on and rankings are not lost.
In addition, both instances support the mobile-first approach. Mobile content delivery is more highly valued by search engines than desktop delivery, and both technologies accommodate this approach.

Backend- und Frontend-Technologies

In both instances we have opted for modern technologies to create a contemporary look & feel in the front- and backend. The code is lean and built and structured according to formal standards, so that it can be maintained easily and quickly with little effort. Both systems are automatically supplied with updates. Any security gaps that may arise can be closed quickly and features are updated regularly.

Backend- und Frontend-Technologies

We achieve optical convergence in the frontend by merging the site components of CMS and shop via a common reverse proxy at HTML level. In this way, users in the frontend get the desired impression that the page is created from a single source. We also use a varnish cache as a reverse proxy.

Find Your Shade

We developed the "Find Your Shade" app specifically for IMparat to help IMparat customers select their preferred shade.

"Hero Image" photo: Clay Banks / Unsplash