When Aiya America came to us looking to migrate their three Magento stores into one BigCommerce store, we knew the task would be a great way to showcase our NuEthic Utah BigCommerce Development services.
Aiya America required a custom-built API for storing and displaying their recipes, as well as user-friendly templates that would help their in-house team to create their own pages after launch. They also asked for a custom recipe app that would allow our client’s staff to add and manage their recipes through a friendly user interface. The app could collate the information into the HTML needed to display the recipes on the frontend, and then post it to the main site backend via the API.
Aiya’s four thousand customers would also need to be migrated, which would prove a difficult task as they were spread throughout the three sites and shared no common ID number.
Working with Aiya, we were able to layout a design for their site. The design layout went rather easily, thanks to Aiya knowing their audience. The migration was mainly a copy of their old site, so the page layouts were not that difficult to copy. Aiya did request some new pages and new designs are included as well.
Here’s a breakdown of what we were able to accomplish with Aiya America:
THE APP: Our developers started right away on the API, considering it was the most time-consuming aspect of the project. We started working on the framework of the app from scratch. We designed the app with Aiya’s staff in mind and made sure to include elements that would give it a very simple user interface. Using text boxes, checkboxes, tags, and image loaders, the app would convert specific recipe information into an HTML page and append it to the main Aiya site via API. The app also included admin credentials and a separate domain.
THE MAIN SITE: After clearing the design with the client, the framework for the site was laid out. While creating the pages was not a difficult task, the specifics of some of the designs were very time-consuming. One difficulty was a timeline element that used a 3D carousel slider to depict the dates and milestones of Aiya. This was especially hard to code and took almost a day to get right. Another difficulty was the integration of the app through the API to the front-end site. After a week of coding the integration was complete and all the recipes were showing up perfectly.
THE MIGRATION: Every project has its obstacles, the migration was the main obstacle of Aiya’s project. What we thought would only take two days to complete, took almost two weeks. Aiya’s original Magento site was split into 3 separate sites: a retail customer database, a wholesale customer site, and a products site. Both the retail database and the wholesale database had multiple tables that included customer information. The databases would be linked together in order to work together, like a spaghetti bowl of code. We would connect 2600 customers out of their 4600 with addresses with one query, and then pull another 1800 with another query. We were able to build our own NuEthic sandbox database to help with migration. By migrating the data in parts, we were able to complete a new database on our sandbox server. Once that database was constructed, the final migration to BigCommerce happened. That final migration took about 4 hours.
DEPLOYMENT: Deployment of Aiya America’s new site was a complete success. We set up a time for deployment with the new host, and the client. We had multiple training sessions with the client to teach them how to use their new site. The new site was much faster and contained more user-friendly tools that they could use. This new site has saved Aiya a ton of time on payroll and increased their overall conversions since launch. Check out their site at www.aiya-america.com.
If you’re in need of site migration or are looking to implement a BigCommerce store similar to Aiya America, contact us at NuEthic for our Utah BigCommerce Development services!