Cassells Industrial Products

Cassells Industrial Products has been supplying hand tools, power tools, and industrial accessories since 1994, building over 30 years of expertise in the industrial supply market. Based in Nottinghamshire, they stock products from trusted brands like Sealey, Bosch, and Draper, selling to both trade and retail customers across the UK. It's a broad catalogue with a mixed customer base, and a website that needs to work hard for both audiences.

Their VisualSoft store had become outdated over time, in comparison to the modern ecosystem that Shopify offers. Visualsoft's backend management was limiting their online growth, and a navigation structure that made finding products harder than it should be. For a business that needs to serve a trade buyer and a retail customer from the same storefront, that's not a small issue.

Cassells needed more than a like-for-like Shopify migration. The brief called for a Shopify 2.0 theme built around their brand identity, restructured navigation and filtering, and trade-specific functionality including payment on account for preferred business customers, and a VAT toggle for switching between incl/excl pricing.

On the data side, the scope covered everything from their VisualSoft store: products, attributes, categories, customers, historic orders, discount codes, and CMS content. SEO continuity through redirects was scoped in from day one to protect their existing search visibility.

Shopify theme discovery and customisation

We started with a theme discovery session to carefully scope out the Shopify theme that would compliment Cassell’s brand and content. A feature-packed theme was recommended, and we customised the homepage, collection and product templates. This included applying their fonts, colours and imagery, populating the homepage and key pages with on-brand sections, and ensuring visual consistency across the full store.

Trade functionality built for Shopify B2B

Getting B2B features in place was central to this Shopify migration. We configured payment on account for approved trade customers, and built a trade registration form with manual admin approval and customer tagging. A VAT toggle in the header lets customers switch between incl/excl VAT pricing, and supplier logos were added across product images, for distinction of reputable brands such as Draper, DeWalt, Black & Decker and Bosch.

Product and customer data migration

We migrated all data from VisualSoft into Shopify, that included core product data, product attributes, category structures, CMS pages, collection filters, customer accounts, and historic order data. Each data type was carefully mapped and validated before go-live to ensure it landed correctly within Shopify's architecture.

Getting the data right was critical. Shopify structures things differently to VisualSoft, so each element needed to be assessed individually, mapped to the correct location in Shopify, and checked before launch to make sure the store was accurate, complete, and ready to trade from day one.

UAT, redirects and launch

The project included thorough testing and performance testing with theme improvements applied where needed. We implemented and verified redirects across the site to maintain SEO continuity between the old VisualSoft URLs and the new Shopify store, then supported our client through theme training ahead of go-live.

Performance that reflects the migration

The results from the Shopify migration speak clearly. The new website achieved a perfect 100/100 SEO score in PageSpeed Insights — up from 92/100 on the old VisualSoft store — and a desktop performance score of 96/100. That's a 43% improvement in overall performance, with page load speeds 78% faster than before.

These aren't just technical wins. Faster load times mean customers spend less time waiting and more time finding the products they need. A cleaner, more stable browsing experience means retail users can navigate easily. And a perfect SEO score means the site is structurally sound for organic growth.

From migration to ongoing Shopify support

The Shopify migration gave Cassells more than a new storefront. It gave them a platform that reflects the scale and ambition of a business that has been trading for over 30 years. Their data made the move intact, their search equity was protected, and their trade functionality was live from launch.

As the site continues to settle and organic data builds, Cassells are well positioned to grow their search presence on a platform that can keep up. Following launch, they moved onto an ongoing Shopify growth support plan with Absolute, allowing us to continue making improvements in planned phases without interrupting day-to-day operations, ensuring the store keeps pace with how their customers search and shop.