From WooCommerce to Shopify in 6 weeks: Oot Granola’s successful replatforming
Oot Granola is a Dutch brand redefining breakfast with their fresh, organic granola that’s low in sugar and entirely gluten-free. Their diverse range of flavors is crafted to deliver both nutrition and indulgence, ensuring that healthy eating is never a compromise on taste. With a focus on providing high-quality, wholesome options, Oot’s mission is to make it easier for people to start their day right. Based in the Netherlands, they cater to a community of health-conscious individuals who value sustainability, convenience, and exceptional flavor.
The Challenge
In early 2023, Oot Granola, a 7-figure e-commerce business, faced a critical operational crisis. Their existing WooCommerce platform proved unable to handle the significant traffic surges generated by their successful television advertising campaigns. This led to frequent website crashes, jeopardizing their growth, customer experience, and revenue.
The core issues were manifold:
- Platform Instability: The open-source nature of WooCommerce, combined with its reliance on external apps, made debugging and maintenance a time-consuming and difficult process. This lack of a robust, scalable infrastructure was a major bottleneck for a brand with ambitions for sustainable growth.
- Urgent Replatforming: Oot Granola needed a rapid solution. They approached us with an ambitious request to migrate their entire store to a new, more stable platform in just four weeks, a project that typically takes several months.
- Complex Integrations: The migration was complicated by the need to integrate crucial, business-critical systems. This included a third-party logistics (3PL) provider, Monta, a new subscription management platform compatible with SEPA payments, and a system for tracking customer acquisition sources.
- Subscription Migration: A cornerstone of Oot's business model is its subscription service. The transition from WooCommerce to a new system required a delicate migration of existing subscriber data to avoid disrupting recurring revenue and ensure a seamless experience for loyal customers.
Our Solutions
We embraced Oot Granola's challenge with a "Minimum Viable Product" (MVP) approach, focusing on delivering a stable, functional platform in a record-breaking timeframe. Our solutions were strategically designed to address each of Oot Granola's specific needs while laying the groundwork for future growth.
- WooCommerce to Shopify Replatforming: We selected Shopify as the ideal new home for Oot Granola. Its robust, scalable infrastructure and reliable app ecosystem provide the stability and flexibility needed to handle high traffic and support sustainable growth. Shopify's native features, including translation capabilities, also prepared the brand for seamless international expansion into markets like Germany.
- Firmhouse for Subscription Management: To handle Oot's subscription model, we implemented Firmhouse, a trusted partner application. Firmhouse automated the billing and recurring payments, significantly reducing the administrative burden on Oot's staff. A critical part of this implementation was ensuring compatibility with SEPA payments, allowing Oot Granola to process payments efficiently across 36 European countries, including key markets like the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. We also leveraged Firmhouse’s API capabilities to create a custom, on-brand Self Service Center (SSC), enabling customers to easily manage their subscriptions, pause deliveries, or adjust shipment dates.
- Custom Monta 3PL Integration: A unique challenge arose from Monta's standard Shopify app, which did not support the automatic addition of box SKUs to orders—a necessity for Oot's logistics. We developed a custom, real-time Shopify Flow that communicated directly with Monta’s system. This innovative solution automated the process, ensuring accurate and efficient order fulfillment.
- Google Sheets for Customer Tracking: To provide Oot with valuable marketing insights, we set up a custom flow to track customer origins. After a purchase, customers were redirected to a customized 'Thank You' page with a survey. Their responses were instantly recorded in a Google Sheets document for easy analysis and fed into their CRM for centralized data management.
- Referral Program Integration: To boost customer loyalty and encourage organic growth, we built an intermediary app to connect Firmhouse and the Shopify app ReferralCandy. This end-to-end integration automated the process of creating unique coupon codes, tracking referrals, and rewarding customers, creating a powerful, scalable word-of-mouth marketing tool.
The Result
Our rapid and strategic replatforming project successfully migrated Oot Granola to Shopify in just six weeks. This record-breaking achievement provided Oot Granola with the stable, scalable, and secure platform they desperately needed.
The key outcomes and continued benefits of this collaboration include:
- Enhanced Stability and Growth: Oot Granola now operates on a robust platform capable of handling high traffic spikes, allowing them to continue investing in marketing without the risk of website crashes.
- Increased Operational Efficiency: The implementation of Firmhouse and the custom Monta integration automated critical business processes, freeing up Oot's staff to focus on other strategic tasks.
- Improved Customer Experience: The new subscription management system, including the custom-branded Self Service Center, offers customers greater control and a seamless, user-friendly experience.
- Seamless Market Expansion: The scalable setup and Shopify's translation features enabled Oot to comfortably replicate their Dutch store in just two weeks to launch in the German market.
- Actionable Insights: The customer tracking system provides Oot Granola with valuable data on marketing campaign effectiveness, informing their future advertising strategies.
Our ongoing partnership with Oot Granola demonstrates the power of a well-executed replatforming project, transforming a crisis into a catalyst for sustainable, long-term growth in the competitive e-commerce landscape.