A WooCommerce store with lots of images? And then moving to a new WordPress host? Not an easy task. Our interview with designer Justyna Schmidt and photographer Andreas Schmidt-Wiethoff from the online store michel und elbe shows how this can be mastered. Including recommendations for the right plugins.
You have a wonderful WordPress online store with photographs of Hamburg. How did the design come about and what tools do you use?
Andreas: Previously, we had a very elaborately built Magento store and were dependent on a digital agency. That cost us a lot of money and we weren't always satisfied with the response times. That's why we decided to take the reins ourselves at the beginning of 2020. Two systems came into question: Shopify and WordPress or WooCommerce.
After a test phase with Shopify, we opted for WordPress. Shopify was easy to use, but not flexible enough in terms of design.
The right WooCommerce theme as a basis
Justyna: I take care of the graphics at michel und elbe. Since I also work a lot as a web designer, I've been at home in the world of WordPress for a long time. It was really fun to design our new website and store with the images from michel und elbe.
I chose Shopkeeper as the WordPress theme - it was a very good basis for the WooCommerce store and for the design. Of course, it didn't work without a lot of CSS adjustments, but it's also fun to personalize the theme.
I've been looking for an uncomplicated and fast slider for the start page for a long time. I wanted to get away from LayerSlider and Smart Slider. With the Gutenslider by German developer Niklas Plessing, I finally found a slider that can be edited directly in the WordPress editor without having to switch to the slider's own, often complicated settings environment. I find that much more efficient.
Image management in WordPress
WooCommerce and hundreds of images - not an easy combination. How did you solve the challenge?
Andreas: Yes, soon thousands of images, because we show mock-ups of each motif to show how the image looks in a living situation. It's easy to lose track in the standard WordPress media library. We couldn't do it without a good premium plugin. We organize the images in folders and subfolders with the Real Media Library plugin, which makes our work much easier.
Gutenberg is controversial, you like to use it. Why? And which blocks are used?
Justyna: I've been working with Gutenberg since the release in 2018 and wouldn't want to miss the blocks. When I saw the new Gutenberg editor for the first time, it was love at first sight. It was like Christmas for me, like getting a new LEGO building set that is infinitely expandable. No more complicated backend and almost "what you see is what you get".
The ability to copy entire groups and use them elsewhere makes the work much easier. A simple theme for WordPress or WooCommerce, a few good blocks of your choice and your website is ready. It used to be that you customized a theme and it had its own design elements that were available. And depending on the theme, you had to relearn the backend. Now I no longer need a "heavy" theme, I can keep the website lean.
I select the blocks I need as required - and can dispense with the rest of the ballast. This significantly increases the performance of the website. In addition to the standard blocks that Gutenberg provides, I prefer to work with Ghost Kit and the Kadence blocks. I have tried many block collections, but I can always rely on these two.
I also think that Gutenberg gets better with every release. A lot has changed again since WordPress 5.5. I think this development is great and I don't regret getting involved with Gutenberg back then.
The right WooCommerce hosting
You only recently switched to Raidboxes. What was the reason?
Andreas: We initially set up the new michel und elbe store on a mass server (Strato). When we were designing it, the performance was still good. But when it came to entering and managing the products in the WooCommerce backend, we realized that we urgently needed more computing power. We looked for a German hosting provider that specializes in WordPress. That's how we came to Raidboxes.
How did you test the performance of our BOXES? And how did our support help you with the setup?
Justyna: Setting up the BOX itself was so easy with the migrator from Raidboxes that we didn't need any help. A little wait until the website was copied and the BOX was ready. At least that's how I remember it.
Andreas: At the beginning, the support team recommended that we test the STARTER-BOX. We thought that was great, because they didn't want to sell us the PRO tariff straight away. The performance of the STARTER-BOX was good, but not fast enough for our complex store with hundreds of variable products in the backend.
We wanted it to be fun. And that's exactly what we got. With the PRO plan for WooCommerce, which we tested next. That was what we wanted. We activated the BOX immediately (after 10 minutes of testing we were convinced) and made a redirect of our domain to the BOX. The chat support helped us set up the redirect quickly and easily.
Moving WordPress - stress-free
How did the move itself go? Not an entirely tension-free moment as a store owner...
Justyna: That surprised me the most. In the past, a digital agency always did the domain transfer for us and I was afraid that something would go wrong, that settings or links wouldn't work. After the successful transfer, Christian from support helped me a lot with DNS administration, as I was hardly familiar with it. That was the moment when I needed active help from you. And Christian "took me by the hand" in the chat and guided me through the settings for optimal WordPress hosting.
By the way, I love your chat function - it's timely and time-saving. Very cool for people who don't like to talk on the phone, like me. The help offered in the chat is of such high quality and so useful that there's no need to phone at all. It's even better because you can exchange links and screenshots in the chat. Many thanks at this point to the smart and patient chat staff!
Andreas: We had received the authcode from our old provider, entered it into Raidboxes and 10 minutes later we were live. I can still remember the excitement on the day we went live. How could it happen so quickly?
WooCommerce Caching
You are still using WP Rocket for performance in combination with other tools. What are they and why do you want to switch?
Justyna: When we still hosted michelundelbe.de on a mass server, I went to great lengths to set up WP Rocket in conjunction with Asset CleanUp Page Speed Booster on the website to increase performance. With the combination of the two premium plugins, I achieved very good results in the frontend.
But that is no longer necessary. Thanks to the built-in caching of Raidboxes, we will no longer need WP Rocket in the future, we are currently letting the subscription expire. I have already deactivated the caching function of WP Rocket so that there are no conflicts with the server's own caching.
For data optimization, a free plugin like Swift Performance lite will probably suffice. I will continue to run a free version of Asset CleanUp Page Speed Booster.
Online store to retail store
What are the future plans for the michel und elbe store?
Andreas: At the moment, we are very happy that we have been able to more than compensate for the corona-related slump in sales in our bricks-and-mortar business with the new online store. The store will of course continue to grow and we are constantly adding new products and product categories. We are analyzing our customers' purchasing behavior and are also adapting our products.
In the future, we want to continue to maintain and improve our SEO settings with Yoast SEO. This is a lot of work with so many products. To make the store even better known, we are planning landing pages in conjunction with a Google Ads campaign.
A few words about you and michelundelbe.de?
Andreas: The michel und elbe gallery has been around since 2005, when we were the first in Hamburg to offer exclusively Hamburg images. The idea arose from our great love of photography and our port city in all its facets. Initially, we only offered the photographs in our gallery. The online store has been around since 2010.
In keeping with the motto "Hamburg for the wall", our photographic works are available in the online store as canvas, Dibond lamination or behind acrylic glass. You can see and touch the pictures live in our gallery at Eppendorfer Weg 3 in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel. Here we also advise our customers on all aspects of processing and give tips on interior design.
Justyna: In addition to working for michel und elbe, I have been working as a graphic and web designer for various clients for 20 years. If you would like to find out more about my work, please have a look here: freiraum-grafikdesign.de.
