In this post, we discuss one of our WordPress development projects that showcases our famous client-first approach.
In the course of our long, successful history, we have served all kinds of clients, from digital agencies and well-established brands to aspiring companies that want to set their foot in the door and start growing.
Our mission is not only to deliver high-quality products to our clients but also give them something extra, something that helps them achieve their business goals more efficiently.
For example, digital agencies look for reliability and predictability in their web development partner so that they won’t let down their own clientele. Brands want a unique, feature-rich solution to bring them more customers and give them the competitive edge. Startups put cost-effectiveness and short time-to-market front and center.
It’s exactly the last scenario that we want to focus on today. In this post, we discuss a project that showcases our ability to offer money-saving solutions to businesses on shoe-string budgets so that they can begin selling their products or services as soon as possible.
Filamente is a state-sponsored startup that strives to be the leading 3D printing platform in Austria, offering its customers a fast, reliable, and cost-effective way to produce high-quality 3D models.
We were contacted by the Filamente owner Jonathan Amon with a request to develop the company’s website through which customers could order 3D printing services for their digital models.
Our task was to create all the static web pages along with a Configurator that would allow customers to design components according to their specifications.
The client also wanted the website to be bilingual (German and English), so we needed to implement that functionality as well. Apart from actually enabling the users to switch from one language to the other manually, the website was supposed to detect the user’s country and select the appropriate language automatically.
Additionally, Jonathan wanted to be able to accept money from customers using three different payment methods (Paypal, credit card, and invoice), so we needed to integrate the appropriate services into the website.
As a government-funded business, Filamente had a relatively limited budget for the web development purposes. That meant we had to seek an optimized solution that met the client’s requirements – a tough challenge, but one that we had risen to many times before.
The client wanted the website to be WordPress-based so that he could easily update its content afterwards. Initially, we offered the client a choice of two WordPress themes that we were planning to customize to match the company’s style: Startupzy and BizConsult.
Jonathan picked the latter. However, upon a more thorough review, we discovered that the selected theme had an excessively complex structure and was challenging to edit.
To let the client save time and cut costs, we offered him an alternative: building the theme from scratch based on the Filamente guide and the photos of the design that the client had provided.
Once Jonathan gave us the thumbs up, we got down to creating the pages and adding some dynamic effects to them. Specifically, we built these pages:
After the groundwork was finished, we proceeded to the next stage – building the Configurator. That was when we employed our famous client-focused approach to the fullest.
The Configurator is by far the most important part of the Filamente website. It’s here that a customer can upload a 3D model, specify its dimensions and material, and get an instant quote.
Originally, the client wanted the Configurator to have a large number of custom features to fine-tune the order placement and fulfillment process. After evaluating the requirements, though, our developers concluded that building a Configurator with all those features would be extremely time-consuming and labor-intensive (approximately 900+ development hours or six months).
Considering the company’s modest budget and the need to go out to the market in as short a time as possible, choosing the fully custom way was hardly feasible.
We offered Jonathan an alternative solution: integrating and customizing the wp3Dprinting WordPress plugin. It had most of the desired functionality, while its customization (both visual and functional) required much less time and effort, and, thus, was cost-efficient.
After discussing it with the client, we received his approval, and the work began. Here are the most notable things that we did:
As a result, we managed to reduce the total Configurator development cost by as much as four times, and it took us just three months (300 development hours) instead of six to get the job done!
To make the website multilingual, we installed and customized the WPML WordPress plugin. It’s important to note that the plugin itself doesn’t translate pages into another language. It’s the website owner who needs to do the translation.
We also configured the plugin to detect the geographical location from which a user is accessing the website and change the language either to German or English automatically.
Another request that we fulfilled was the creation of a popup that appears when a user launches the website for the first time (see the animated GIF above). The popup serves two functions. First, it asks the user to indicate whether they are a business or a private customer by clicking the appropriate button (that choice affects the total price).
Second, it asks the user to allow the use of cookies by clicking the corresponding button (initially disabled until the user chooses their customer type).
This is a user-friendly arrangement since the customer makes fewer clicks than in the case of two separate popups. Notice how the popup follows the general style of the website.
The client had some update requests at the first stage, such as changing font size, using different colors, or positioning certain page elements, and we made all the required changes. In the end, Jonathan was fully satisfied with our performance, diligence, and empathy.
Want to be our next happy client? Drop us a line.
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