How Vital Health Foods Overhauled Their Ecommerce with WooCommerce

Background

Vital Health Foods is a heritage South African brand best known for its range of nutritional supplements, natural ingredients, and wellness products. Their website and online store ran for years on Magento, which had become slow to update and clunky to manage. As consumer expectations evolved, their team saw the need for a more modern, flexible platform.

Migration Strategy

The development team at kri8it began by exporting tens of thousands of SKUs, customer accounts, and order histories from Magento. They mapped each product attribute and user field to WooCommerce equivalents, then imported the data into a fresh WordPress instance. This process included rigorous testing to ensure no orders or memberships were lost in the transition.

Design and Theme Development

To deliver a cohesive look and feel, kri8it created a child theme based on the Canvas framework. Canvas gave them hooks, filters, and layout controls to refine every section. They reimagined the homepage, product pages, and checkout flows so that navigation felt intuitive. Color palettes and typography were updated to reflect Vital’s brand guidelines.

Membership & Pricing

Vital Club members receive year-long discounts on select product categories. The team used the WooCommerce Groups plugin to tag users who purchased a membership product, then applied those group rules via WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing. A bit of custom PHP tied membership expiration logic to WordPress cron jobs, ensuring discounts drop off automatically after a year.

Q&A and Navigation Enhancements

To boost engagement, kri8it built a front-end question form that posts inquiries directly into WordPress. Vital’s health experts log in, reply inside the admin, and the original asker receives an email alert. For navigation the team leveraged UberMenu to consolidate multiple menus into a single mega-menu system, making deep category browsing fast.

Results & Next Steps

After launch, Vital saw a smoother admin workflow and faster page loads. Membership uptake climbed steadily in the first quarter, and customers praised the new layout. The site is now easier to update and extend, setting a strong foundation for future campaigns, new product lines, and seasonal promotions.