At hello, we often encounter projects that are more complex than the usual – those that require not just building a standalone website, but also deep integration with existing systems, unique customizations, and sophisticated behind-the-scenes automation. The B2B website project for Opticana was exactly that.
The goal of the website was to enable branches, franchisees, and business clients to easily and quickly place orders from Opticana's product system via a digital storefront tailored for daily use by a professional audience.
What Did the Project Include?
Automatic Product Synchronization
We developed an advanced automation process that imports hundreds and thousands of products from external systems. The automation includes:
- Automatic category assignment for each product
- Synchronization of inventory, product attributes, and up-to-date pricing
- Handling products with missing images (including image fetching directly from a file server)
- Updating product status based on completeness of information (e.g., only fully-complete products are shown to customers)
- Sending reports to selected contacts based on predefined rules
Our aim was to build a website that doesn't rely on manual data entry – but rather a system that reflects the business's data in real time.
Choosing WordPress as the Project Platform
For projects of this nature, there are often multiple viable technological paths - including building a fully custom system using frameworks like React. After a thorough analysis of Opticana’s needs, we chose WordPress as the core platform due to its combination of stability, rapid deployment, lower development costs, and ease of use for the internal team.
WordPress, together with WooCommerce, provided us with a solid foundation - including user management, product handling, and an intuitive admin interface - which allowed us to build a highly customized solution tailored to the client’s business logic.
This approach helped us deliver a robust and flexible system while significantly reducing development time and costs, without compromising on functionality or the complexity required by the project.
Custom Plugin Development
To fully tailor the solution to Opticana’s needs, we developed several custom plugins:
Groups & Rules
A plugin for managing user groups and custom discount rules:
- Creating user groups based on franchise type, branches, or business customers
- Defining dynamic discount rules for each group
- Supporting discount structures per agreement for each franchisee/branch
- Automated price calculation based on defined rules
- Simple editing interface within the WordPress admin panel
Product Visibility
A plugin for managing product visibility by group:
- Control which products are displayed to each group – based on categories, brands, product attributes, etc.
- Ability to hide products from users based on rules
- Easy assignment of visibility groups from the user edit screen
- Filtering search results, categories, and product pages so each user sees only what they are allowed to see
The combination of these plugins created a full B2B experience: tailored pricing per user and complete control over what each branch or franchisee can view on the site.
UX/UI Adjustments for B2B Environment
In B2B websites, buyers often arrive with a pre-prepared “shopping list.”
We focused on presenting content in a clear and efficient way to support fast and easy operation. At every stage, we worked to streamline processes – whether through a quick checkout flow, compact and targeted support forms, easy navigation, or a strong emphasis on surfacing critical information for branches and franchisees.
Key Challenges Along the Way
Projects like this come with several challenges:
- Data consistency – Automatically handling incomplete information from the source system (e.g., missing product images, descriptions, or attributes)
- Performance – Ensuring the website loads quickly and remains stable, even with thousands of products
- Admin usability – Building a backend that allows Opticana’s staff to manage categories, track orders, and view statuses – without touching code
The solutions we developed together with the client transformed the site into a real working tool for the branch network – not just another showcase site.
In Conclusion
In every such project, we understand that development is only part of the mission. We must always think about the client, their users, and how the system truly supports them. At hello, we know how to take real business needs – even when they involve serious technical challenges – and turn them into working solutions.
If you’re also in need of a B2B solution, an internal smart system, or a website that requires custom adaptations – we’d be happy to help.
Leave us your details, and let’s talk.