KEH Camera

Background story

Our relationship with the world’s largest online used camera and photography equipment store, KEH Camera, began in 2015. They initially approached us as they were looking for an agency that would look at their site and identify any potential technical problems that damaged the performance. We all agreed that a technical audit was a perfect way to start, and since then, we have been working together to improve their business.

KEH Camera, headquartered in Atlanta, USA, has a tradition of over 40 years of serving the camera community. They became the largest curated market for field-tested, expert-graded photo and video equipment in the industry.

At KEH, they strive to offer great value, excellent service, and quality equipment – and those values are what make us the perfect match.

Challenge

When Magento announced the end of Magento 1, the client decided to migrate because they wanted to maintain PCI compliance. They didn’t want challenges with payment gateways and wanted full platform support. We were so excited about the big project that was ahead of us that was worth planning on two continents, so we started the migration talks by visiting them in their headquarters in Atlanta. The planning phase kicked off in Osijek, where we hosted their technical director.

Organizing a kickoff meeting and project planning in our office has always been the best possible way to start our long-term cooperation with our clients. Having a chance to meet them in person and giving our clients a chance to get to know the team that will be working on their project in months to come sets up a completely different vibe on our relationship!

Solution

Migration to Magento 2

Since this was a Magento 1 to Magento 2 migration project, we needed to ensure all the essential data was taken over to the new website. With almost a million products the store had, it was a big challenge.

The migration included, among other things:

• customer data
• orders details
• custom extensions
• shipping logic

In addition to this, we needed to utilize new, improved features properly.

We were taking over some of the custom features, and we were also introducing new ones. So, we needed to address potential conflicts between the new and the old website functionalities. This has been properly covered during the project planning phase.

During migration, you become aware that Magento 1 and Magento 2 are in some parts like two different worlds. For example, Magento 2 requires that the WordPress blog page is on the same server as the online store, but we didn’t want it for security reasons. Our experienced developers managed with a lot of effort to make the blog and webshop located on different servers.

Marketplace

Every eCommerce development project is specific, and this one was no exception. What makes KEH special is the fact that this online store is a kind of own marketplace. They not only sell cameras and photography equipment but also buy them.

In addition to sales, a large part of KEH’s business is the purchase of used equipment. Our frontend team did a great job creating the Sell Shop app, developed in React. It is a place where users can sell their used equipment.

The application works in a way that users find the gear that they want to sell in the estimator, determine its condition and share what is included along with this item. After filling in all the information, the user receives instructions for packaging and payment.

We considered choosing an approach to build this functionality in the planning phase by considering several options, including PWA. After a lot of thinking, we decided to work with React, connected via API, because we wanted a modern and quality solution.

Having SEO in mind

One of the areas that can get overlooked with migration projects is SEO. This is why we always work through an entire SEO migration checklist on our projects to ensure everything is covered.

Years of experience have gone in our favor in fighting the SEO battles during the migration, and we successfully ensured that all the URLs were properly redirected, and that our client’s organic traffic didn’t drop. And not only that, they’re seeing improvements in the organic traffic and revenues alike.

Results

The new https://www.keh.com/ was launched on September 1, 2020, and after the launch, results are great! The positive results were visible immediately, and the total revenue grew 48% compared to the same period last year.

This growth has continued throughout the year, and you can check out some of the numbers (YoY comparison) below.

Do you need someone to help you plan your Magento 2 migration? Drop us a line and let’s talk! We will reply as soon as possible!