Case Study: BFore achieves a faster, SEO-friendly, and feature-rich online store with WooCommerce

Moving from Virtuemart to WooCommerce

Red Giant Design, a digital marketing and design studio in Durban, rebuilt BFore.co.za — a large South African online retailer of cell phones, tablets, TVs and electronics — after the original Virtuemart/Joomla site proved limited. Virtuemart lacked essential backend features, a strong plugin ecosystem and reliable support, and the store needed South Africa‑specific payment and shipping functionality plus better SEO, analytics and checkout UX.

The team migrated BFore to WordPress/WooCommerce, added Yoast, caching, PayFast and other local and marketing extensions, and built a custom CreditCart payment plugin. The relaunch fixed canonical and tracking issues, introduced Schema.org data and a single‑page checkout, improved account and marketing tools (follow‑up emails, reviews for discounts, waitlists), and cut site URLs by 90% (3,819 to 394), delivering faster performance and a much happier client, with only minor remaining email/order‑status customization tweaks.

BFore

Mark Atkinson

BFore