Metal Urges

Metal Urges is a renowned Hobart jeweller specializing in unique, handcrafted pieces. After achieving success and acclaim selling their pieces offline—both locally and abroad—it was time to see if their approach could be translated to an ecommerce sales model. However, their existing WordPress site was not built for selling. Nor would their product photography system integrate well with that platform.

They knew Shopify would be the best fit, but needed some expert help to make a clean transition. That’s when they called Getbusi.

The Plan

It was clear from our first meeting that MU’s existing website content and branding was very carefully considered and needed to be maintained. Effort had been made optimising the site for search engines (SEO) which the new site would need to reflect. Selecting a suitable Shopify theme that aligned with those goals would be crucial.

During the initial planning sessions we also identified that Shopify’s customer features would make an ideal replacement for their existing ad-hoc CRM. To get there, Getbusi would need to develop some migration scripts to clean and transform that data such that it could be imported into Shopify.

On the ecommerce side, there were several unique factors. Selling bespoke jewellery and gemstones online is not like selling off-the-shelf products. Things like shipping policies, payment methods and insurance had to be considered very carefully. Pre- and post-sale communication becomes much more critical. The workflow from getting each piece photographed, catalogued, and into Shopify’s inventory system also had to be silky smooth and easily repeatable.

Fortunately, MU had some third-party technology called GemHub which had just released native integration capabilities for Shopify. With the right setup, this would allow them to synchronise new pieces, their photos, 360 videos and their metadata directly into Shopify’s products and collections.

Outcome

Within 3 months, working closely with MU’s staff, we launched the new Shopify site. They made their first ecommerce sale not long after.

We started by selecting and customising a premium Shopify theme to match their existing brand and WordPress website design. The homepage was migrated to Shopify first to set the standard for everything that followed.

In parallel, we developed Python migration scripts to transform 12,000+ customer records from their old system into Shopify’s format. This included creating custom meta fields to store important relationship management data that MU relies on. We also migrated all 25+ website pages from WordPress, preserving their SEO attributes, metadata, redirects, and photography.

The trickiest part was integrating GemHub application with Shopify’s product and inventory systems. This allows product metadata and photos to sync automatically between a source Google Sheet, GemHub, and Shopify without delay or human error. We tested extensively alongside MU’s staff to ensure compatibility and that critical metadata like SKUs and Harmonized System (HS) codes remained consistent throughout. We documented these procedures so different team members could reliably repeat the process.

After a round of design feedback and final tweaks, we scheduled a suitable launch window and published the new site without any downtime.

Check out their site here: metalurges.com.au

Testimonial

"James and Dan from Getbusi were fantastic! From the initial consultation to the website launch, they were responsive and helpful. They went above and beyond the original scope and were happy to assist with extra requests. The training they provided was excellent, and we're thrilled with our new custom website. Highly recommend!"