Case study · Pool & garden

A pool shop, rebuilt in three languages

Poolroboter.ch sells pool robots from Dolphin, Zodiac and iGarden, plus pool-water care and spare parts, from Pfungen ZH. In 2025 we moved the shop from PrestaShop to WooCommerce in German, French and Italian. A second phase in 2026 added a service section, after-sales pages and richer schema.

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Startseite von poolroboter.ch
Client
Poolroboter.ch
Industry
Pool & garden
Services
Development · Content · SEO & GEO · Support
Duration
6 weeks to the 2025 launch, phase 2 in 2026

The brief

A shop with years of history, on a new platform

Poolroboter.ch is a Swiss online shop for pool robots from Dolphin, Zodiac and iGarden, with pool-water care, water analysis, filter media, accessories, hot-tub care and spare parts alongside. Orders ship from Pfungen ZH. Its catalogue reaches back to 2018 and ran on PrestaShop until the move.

The new WooCommerce shop had to take over products, categories, images and customer accounts, keep the old PrestaShop addresses working and serve German, French and Italian customers from one catalogue — with shipping rules for robots, pool chemicals, freight and spare parts that standard WooCommerce does not cover.

Deliverables
Shop migration · Trilingual shop · Service section
Platform
WordPress · Blocksy · WooCommerce · Polylang Pro
Languages
German · French · Italian
Content
201 products per language · 8 main categories · FAQ
Engagement
Migration, phase 2 and ongoing support
Range
Pool robots · Water care · Spare parts

The challenge

One catalogue, three languages, many rules

Poolroboter.ch did not start from zero. Products going back to 2018, their images and the customer accounts all lived in PrestaShop, and customers and search engines already knew the old product and category addresses.

The new shop also had to speak German, French and Italian, and send robots, pool chemicals, bulky goods and small spare parts each by its own rules.

  • Data from PrestaShop

    Two import runs brought over 114 products, 20 categories and 189 media files, then the customer accounts. 110 old addresses now redirect to the new pages.

  • Three languages, one catalogue

    201 products per language and 76 product attributes, with availability flags kept in sync across German, French and Italian and one clean hreflang group per address.

  • Rules WooCommerce lacks

    Cart content decides between dangerous goods, truck freight, DHL for spare parts and pickup, and discontinued robots keep a page that leads to spare parts.

Behind the build

A relaunch, then a second phase a year later

The shop grew in two steps: the 2025 move to WooCommerce with its language rollout, and the 2026 phase with a service section, new blocks and SEO work. Planning, design, code, content, SEO, security and support stayed with one in-house team and one point of contact.

Months 1–18

  1. Relaunch, Months 1–2
  2. Rollout, Months 3–7
  3. Run, Months 8–14
  4. Upgrade, Months 15–16
  5. Support, Months 17–18

  • Management

    • Import plan, Months 1–2
    • PR workflow, Months 15–16

  • Design

    • Theme, fonts, Months 1–2

  • Development

    • Shop, filters, Months 1–2
    • Blocks, after-sales, Months 15–16

  • Content

    • Pages, news, Months 1–2
    • French and Italian catalogue, Months 4–7

  • SEO

    • 301 redirects, Months 1–2
    • hreflang, schema, Months 15–16

  • Cybersecurity

    • Security setup, Months 1–2

  • Support

    • Support, Month 3 – ongoing

What we built

Five systems, one shop in three languages

Product consultant

The right robot in a few clicks

A virtual product consultant asks about pool type, size, power supply and budget, one step at a time, and builds a pool profile alongside. At the end it suggests matching robots from Dolphin, Zodiac and iGarden. A floating finder button leads there from the shop.

  • Questions one step at a time, with a progress bar
  • Pool profile built while answering
  • Finder button on the shop pages
Virtueller Produktberater mit Fragen zum Pooltyp und Pool-Profil auf poolroboter.ch

Service & spare parts

A service section built from its own blocks

Phase 2 added a service page built from custom blocks: service areas, trust signals, a comparison with direct imports, the service process, reviews and a service form whose brand field narrows down the model list.

  • Grid of six service areas
  • Comparison with direct-import offers
  • Service form with a brand → model cascade
Servicebereich mit Leistungskarten auf poolroboter.ch

Product page

Service and spare parts right on the product page

Product pages carry a service tab with six icon cards, the compatible spare parts below the tabs and delivery information in each language. Discontinued robots switch to an after-sales layout that points to spare parts instead of a dead end.

  • Service tab with six icon cards
  • Compatible spare parts below the tabs
  • After-sales layout for discontinued models
Service-Tab mit Icon-Karten auf einer Produktseite von poolroboter.ch

Catalogue

A range you can narrow down

45 filter fields in three language sets, brand logos in the filters and a nested category accordion lead through eight main categories. Category and brand pages add an FAQ and an SEO text, and a filter button keeps it all usable on phones.

  • Nested category accordion
  • Filters with brand logos
  • FAQ and SEO text per category
Kategorieseite Poolroboter mit Kategorie-Akkordeon und Produktraster

Multilingual

German, French and Italian from one catalogue

Polylang Pro runs the shop in three languages, each with its own URLs, product texts and Google Shopping feed. Availability flags stay in sync across translations, and our own plugin translates the French and Italian legal texts from the German source.

  • fr-CH and it-CH versions with hreflang
  • One shopping feed per language
  • Legal texts translated from the German source
Französische Startseite von poolroboter.ch

Start a project

Let’s build your next platform

Tell us what you sell and who you sell to. We come back with a clear scope, a realistic timeline and an estimate — and one team that owns the whole thing from the first call to launch.

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Inside the project

Every step of the work, out in the open

Most agencies show you the finished site. We show you how it got there. Open any discipline to see what the team did and what it handed over.

01 / Project management

One point of contact, the whole way through

The 2025 move ran as a two-step import from PrestaShop: catalogue and media first, customer accounts eight days before the first order on the new shop. In 2026 the work moved to pull requests across two repositories, with the blocks plugin deployed on every merge.

  • 2

    import runs from PrestaShop

  • 47

    merged pull requests in phase 2

What we did

  • Two-step import plan from PrestaShop
  • Work branches merged through pull requests
  • Blocks plugin deployed on every merge to main

Handed over Approved scope and requirements → Design

The project in numbers

What the shop runs on

Each figure comes from the live shop, its database or its code.

  • 603

    products live in German, French and Italian

  • 22

    pool-robot models in the range

  • 110

    301 redirects from PrestaShop addresses

  • 241

    FAQ answers with FAQPage markup

  • 45

    filter fields in three language sets

  • 12

    custom Gutenberg blocks

  • 12

    payment methods, TWINT and PostFinance included

  • 47

    merged pull requests in phase 2

Below the surface

What runs behind the shop window

Customers see robots, prices and a checkout. Behind them sits the work that keeps old links alive, three languages apart and every parcel on the right carrier.

  • Development

    A migration in two runs

    Products, categories and media came over from PrestaShop in a first run; the customer accounts followed in a second run before launch.

  • SEO

    Old links still work

    110 old PrestaShop product and category addresses redirect permanently to their new WooCommerce pages.

  • SEO & GEO

    One hreflang group per page

    Our own hreflang output replaces Polylang’s: one complete de-CH, fr-CH and it-CH group with x-default, paged archives included.

  • GEO

    Topics spelled out for AI

    The Organization schema lists the shop’s topics in German, French, Italian and English, and product schema adds return policy, shipping regions, GTIN and MPN.

  • Content

    Legal texts in three languages

    German legal texts come from IT-Recht Kanzlei; our own plugin translates them into French and Italian and watches the date of the source.

  • Development

    Shipping by cart content

    Dangerous goods, truck freight and robots follow their own rules, spare-parts-only carts go by DHL, and local pickup always stays available.

  • Cybersecurity

    A login that is hard to find

    The admin login moved to its own address, wp-login.php meets a Cloudflare challenge, and CleanTalk filters spam at the firewall.

  • Support

    A lighter back end

    Must-use plugins throttle the WordPress heartbeat and switch off unused WooCommerce admin features, while LiteSpeed Cache, WebP images and Cloudflare serve the pages.

What you can expect

A platform that keeps earning its place

We build for the things that last — a platform that is clearer to navigate, more credible to every visitor and genuinely easier for your team to run and grow.

  • Easier to choose

    Clear categories, filters and prices let visitors find the right offer themselves instead of writing to ask where to begin.

  • Credible to every visitor

    A site that looks and reads like the quality behind it — for first-time visitors and long-standing customers alike.

  • Effortless to keep current

    Your team updates products, content and news itself — no developer ticket, no waiting in a queue.

  • Built to grow

    New products, categories and languages slot in as the business expands — without a rebuild.

Built on a clear goal

We agree the goals that matter up front and build toward them together — then stay on as a partner after launch to keep the platform sharp as the business grows.

In their words

What the client says

A project counts when the people who run it every day would do it again.

  • Moving from PrestaShop to WooCommerce kept our catalogue and our old links, and the shop now runs in German, French and Italian from one system.

    Poolroboter.ch

    Site we built: poolroboter.ch (opens in a new tab)

Working with

  • WordPress
  • WooCommerce
  • Blocksy
  • Polylang Pro
  • Germanized Pro
  • Payrexx
  • Yoast SEO
  • Cloudflare

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  • Clear scope, timelines, and estimate
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