Universal Biologicals

The core brief for this Magento 1 to Magento 2 migration centred on creating a scalable, visually engaging platform equipped with powerful administrative features and advanced data migration capabilities. Key objectives included ensuring the seamless transfer of extensive product and customer data, developing custom import tools to support grouped product management.

These requirements would enchance layered navigation and category filtration, delivering reliable order processing to improve the overall customer experience. Additionally, modular theme adjustments were implemented to align the platform with Universal Biologicals branding.

Bespoke Shopify templates
We worked with Universal Biologicals to define their requirements for the site, focusing on both design and custom import functionality. In particular, we developed a system that enables the upload of supplier pricing lists and data sheets, automatically updating the product catalogue at scheduled intervals. This ensures that product information remains accurate and consistently reflects the latest specifications.

Bespoke Shopify templates
During the design stage, we began with a workshop to capture Universal Biologicals frontend requirements, exploring the functionality and layouts they preferred as well as reference sites from within their industry. From this, we created bespoke designs for the homepage, category page (PLP), and product page (PDP), going through several iterations to refine the look and feel. The final designs drew inspiration from their previous site while introducing modernised elements provided with the Hyvä theme to deliver a cleaner, more engaging user experience.

Custom data migration
A key part of the project was the bespoke import of product and collection data. This required tailored data mapping to ensure product attributes and collections were transferred cleanly.

Third-party integrations with Shopify
Universal Biologicals required the ability to import several different formats of grouped product data into the Magento 2 site. Each supplier provides their data in different formats. From this data products need to be imported into Magento, which would also include the generation of products that would list the imported products from the supplier in groups on the frontend. Their previous Magento 1 website used a heavily customised PHP application based on a Magento 1 product importer application module, which was accessible through a separate portal that allowed the client to upload their data to and trigger imports.