Honouring Scottish heritage with a renewed Craft CMS webshop
ScotlandShop is a digital and retail custodian of Scottish culture. Established in 2002 by founder Anna White from her spare bedroom, the company has grown into a global operation serving customers across Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, and even the Middle East. From kilts and wedding dresses to custom-designed tartans for charities, businesses, and even Porsche interiors, ScotlandShop offers a vast and unique product catalogue deeply rooted in Scottish identity.
What sets ScotlandShop apart is its range of tartans and tailoring. “Most in the industry offer tartans from one mill or a limited collection”, says John Cove, marketing manager. “We offer everything that’s currently in weave in Scotland. If it exists, we can source it. And if it doesn’t, we’ll design it for you.”
But as their product catalogue and global audience only grew, their digital infrastructure lagged behind. “The old site was a little bit of a Frankenstein”, John explains. “It had been developed over many years, and every fix created another weak spot.”
Complexity, scale, and legacy
ScotlandShop’s previous website was built on Craft CMS 3, had become increasingly slow and was dealing with various problems. Website’s speed was a persistent problem, made worse by the vast number of image variations required. “For one product, we could have over 1500 images”, John notes. “Each tartan variation, each drape: every detail requires a render. Multiply that across thousands of products, and you have a serious data load.”
Another layer of complexity came from their multilingual, multi-regional site structure. The website operates in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese, with region-specific versions for the UK, Europe, and North America. Managing this digital ecosystem on an aging foundation had become another challenge.
Choosing WHITE
After consulting Craft CMS directly, ScotlandShop shortlisted three potential partners—two UK-based agencies and one Dutch agency: WHITE. “What stood out about WHITE was their singular focus on Craft”, says John. “Other agencies dabbled in multiple platforms, but the people from WHITE are specialists. They know Craft inside out.” That expertise extended beyond CMS. ScotlandShop’s hosting was handled through AWS, previously managed by a third-party intermediary. This added complexity and cost, sometimes lead to finger-pointing when issues arose. “With WHITE, that middle layer disappeared”, John explains. “They manage AWS directly. It’s simpler, cheaper, much faster and we know exactly who to call.”
Rebuilding from the ground up with Craft CMS 5
Initially, the plan was to repair and upgrade the existing site. But once WHITE's technical team reviewed the codebase of ScotlandShop, they recommended starting from scratch with Craft CMS 5. Craft 5 wasn’t even publicly released at the time of contract signing. But WHITE’s direct relationship with Craft’s core developers ensured a smooth transition.
WHITE led a full rebuild of the site architecture, introducing dozens of improvements. Firstly, speed optimization. Smarter rendering and caching made sure to handle the high volume of product images and live draping previews. Secondly, automation. Previously manual content task like updating available tartans on product pages, were fully automated. Filters now apply across all product variants automatically, saving admin time. WHITE also added new regional versions for Canadian customers in English and French. And of course the direct AWS management and resource optimization, reducing hosting costs.
A complex migration
Rebuilding a site with such global reach required some planning and execution. “We’re a 24-hour business,” John explains. “When the UK goes offline, North America comes online. When they log off, Australia wakes up. There’s no ‘downtime window.’” To manage this, WHITE established a window of time to work on the website around 6 am, a collaborative workflow with regular calls, shared Trello boards for issue tracking, and staged releases for testing. An external SEO consultant was brought in to ensure search rankings remained stable, with WHITE managing all redirects and structural changes accordingly.
Tangible Results
Since the launch of the new site, ScotlandShop has seen clear benefits:
- Site speed has improved, directly boosting conversion rates;
- SEO rankings are up, thanks to better structure and faster load times;
- Operating costs have dropped due to reduced AWS spend and the elimination of third-party infrastructure management;
- Editorial efficiency has increased through automation and smarter backend workflows;
- Customer experience has improved significantly, with fewer bugs and more intuitive navigation.
“We’re tracking speed constantly,” says John. “And there’s a clear correlation between page speed and conversion. The faster the site, the better it performs.”
Expansion and innovation
