Willemse Boosts Online Gardening Sales with Shopify Plus

Challenge: Outdated Platform and Rising Customer Expectations

Willemse, a family-owned gardening specialist since 1962, ran its online store on Oxatis from 2017. As mobile use exploded and gardening became more mainstream, customers needed a smooth experience and fast checkout when they shopped at the last minute in spring. The old setup struggled to adapt to mobile screens, lacked fresh features, and forced the IT team into long development cycles that delayed new promotions and seasonal updates. When spikes in demand hit on warm weekends, the site creaked under load, threatening bounce rates and lost orders. Leadership knew that a more flexible, scalable platform was essential to keep pace with new shoppers and to let the internal team focus on plant sourcing, gardening advice, and customer satisfaction—not wrestling with code.

Solution: Migration to Shopify Plus with Key Integrations

In late 2022, Willemse solidified its choice for Shopify Plus by leveraging insights from its Dutch acquisition, Bakker, which already ran on the platform. The team appreciated the clean UX, market-leading reliability, and a vast app library. They moved swiftly: setup and configuration took one-third the time compared to their previous CMS. Projects that once stalled for weeks were completed in days.

Three cornerstone apps joined the Shopify core.Pageflyenabled drag-and-drop design of landing pages and seasonal catalogs without coding.Mollieexpanded payment options across local and international methods so gardeners could pay with their preferred service. AndFlitsrevamped the customer account portal, letting service reps issue custom vouchers and track post-purchase questions in one dashboard. Together, these additions gave the team a modular toolkit that adapts fast to promotions, weather-related demand, and new product lines.

Results: Faster Launches, Speed Gains, and Traffic Growth

By December 2022, the new Shopify Plus site went live. Willemse immediately measured a 100% improvement in page load times—a critical factor for reducing bounce rates and improving search rankings. Setup time was slashed by 3X, freeing up developers to deliver customer-facing features instead of wrestling with platform limitations. Three months later, organic traffic was up by 10%, driven by better mobile performance and SEO-friendly structure. Team morale soared as staff from merchandising to marketing joined weekly content workshops, redefining store pages and gardening tips together.

Six months on, Willemse is planning to roll out Shopify Plus’s new checkout and link a dedicated CRM to respond even faster to order questions. Enhanced search is on the horizon to guide garden enthusiasts toward the right plants based on season and skill level. With Shopify Plus’s reliability, the risk of downtime or data loss has dropped to near zero, letting Willemse focus on its core mission: shipping healthy plants and making gardeners happy.