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Case study · E-commerce and retail

B2B networking distributor: from WooCommerce to a headless catalog-mode store with WhatsApp quoting

KINTO migrated a networking distributor’s catalog to a headless store that weighs a fifth of what it did and, with no public prices, turns every product page into a WhatsApp quote request.

By KINTO · Published

Figures, each with its source

  • over a thousand

    products in the unified catalog

    Measured

  • ≈−80% (from ≈0.5 MB to <0.1 MB)

    store listing weight

    Measured

Ranges or orders of magnitude where a figure could identify the client, each with its source.

How the transformation unfolded From the problem to what changed, in the five steps every KINTO case follows.

  1. Problem

    A large, heterogeneous catalog with no normalized technical data lived in a WooCommerce store that had to be left behind.

  2. Signals

    Four signals: market, business, user experience and support.

  3. How we understood it

    We cross-checked the client’s inventory against the store catalog by code and barcode, crawled the reference catalog, ran assisted matching with human review of ambiguous cases, and measured page weight before and after.

  4. What we built

    A programmatic WooCommerce migration with 301 redirects, and a headless store with an automatic “catalog mode”: when the price is zero, the cart is hidden and a WhatsApp button appears with the product prefilled.

  5. Transformation

    The store’s product listing dropped about 80% in weight, the catalog was unified at over a thousand products with assisted enrichment, and the site went live on its own domain with analytics running.

Before and after, by dimension Editorial levels from 0 to 4 read from the text of this case, never a figure drawn to scale.

  • Store listing

    Before

    Heavy, slow on mobile (level 1 of 4)

    After

    Light (level 4 of 4)

  • Catalog data

    Before

    Heterogeneous (level 1 of 4)

    After

    Unified, enriched (level 3 of 4)

  • Quote request

    Before

    Arrives without context (level 1 of 4)

    After

    WhatsApp, product prefilled (level 4 of 4)

The four signals we read What the market, the business, the user experience and support were saying before KINTO built anything.

  • Market

    A reference competitor served as a public benchmark of names, categories and specifications.

  • Business

    Without public prices a cart makes little sense for most products: conversion is a conversation.

  • User experience

    The store’s product listing was heavy and slow on mobile.

  • Support

    Quote requests arrive on WhatsApp; they needed to arrive with product context.

How the catalog was reconciled
  1. Inventory cross-check By code and barcode
  2. Reference crawl A public benchmark
  3. Assisted matching Human review of ambiguous cases
  4. Weight measured Before and after the move

Connections

  • Inventory cross-check → Reference crawl
  • Reference crawl → Assisted matching
  • Assisted matching → Weight measured

KINTO migrated a networking distributor’s catalog to a headless store that weighs a fifth of what it did and, with no public prices, turns every product page into a WhatsApp quote request.

Problem

A large, heterogeneous catalog with no normalized technical data lived in a WooCommerce store that had to be left behind. Sales are B2B by quotation, so prices could not be public.

Signals

  • Market: A reference competitor served as a public benchmark of names, categories and specifications.
  • Business: Without public prices a cart makes little sense for most products: conversion is a conversation.
  • User experience: The store’s product listing was heavy and slow on mobile.
  • Support: Quote requests arrive on WhatsApp; they needed to arrive with product context.

How we understood it

  • Inventory and store cross-check by code and barcode.
  • Reference catalog crawl and assisted matching, with human review of ambiguous cases.
  • Page-weight measurement before and after the migration.

What we built and why

  • Programmatic migration from WooCommerce to the commerce platform, with brand collections and 301 redirects from the old URLs.
  • Headless store with automatic “catalog mode”: when the price is zero, price and cart are hidden and a WhatsApp button appears with the product prefilled and tracked in analytics.
  • Catalog intelligence: technical spec enrichment in review mode, never blindly automatic.
  • Automatic rebuild of the site when the catalog changes, llms.txt and structured data for FAQs and listings.

Why this way: In B2B quote-based sales the price is not published; the site should lead the buyer into the conversation with the product already identified, not into an empty cart.

Transformation

  • The store listing dropped about 80% in weight.

  • Unified catalog of over a thousand products with assisted enrichment.

  • Site live on its own domain with analytics running.

  • products in the unified catalog: over a thousand (measured)

  • store listing weight: ≈−80% (from ≈0.5 MB to <0.1 MB) (measured)

What we don’t know yet

  • Later sales, traffic or conversion: no evidence.
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