A Chinese language store, rebuilt on one custom plugin

The AU & NZ home of Better Chinese

Jiale Zhongwen (家乐中文, “Happy Family Chinese”) is the Australian and New Zealand distributor for Better Chinese, one of the world’s leading publishers of Chinese-as-an-additional-language resources. From her website she sells textbooks, workbooks, online story libraries and online school accounts to schools, teachers and parents across Australia and New Zealand, and delivers online classes to students.

It is a business where the website has to do two demanding jobs at once: sell physical and digital products, and reliably deliver access, order details to the schools and parents who buy, and login credentials to the students who learn.

Client

Jiale Zhongwen

Industry

Education & ecommerce

Platform

Custom WordPress + custom plugin

Services

Development, custom plugin, hosting & maintenance

Engagement

Since 2023, ongoing

Live site

jialezhongwen.com.au ↗

Thirteen plugins, and none of it working

When Jiale came to us in 2023, the site she had inherited was in trouble. To deliver the custom emails, order details and student logins the business depends on, the previous developer had stacked 13 plugins on top of each other and wired their features together. It was fragile, and it had started to fail.

1. Thirteen plugins, sandwiched together. A brittle stack layered up to fake features WordPress could not do on its own.
2. Broken automation. Order emails to schools and parents were not sending, and student login details were not being delivered.
3. Slow and unstable. Core Web Vitals of just 63 on mobile and 75 on desktop, with a long list of issues underneath.

One custom plugin, built for her business

We rebuilt the site on a fast, custom WordPress foundation and, most importantly, replaced the entire 13-plugin stack with a single custom plugin built specifically for how Jiale’s business works. It handles everything the old patchwork tried to do, reliably: it sends tailored order emails and order details to the schools and parents who buy, and it automatically delivers login credentials to students so they can get straight into their online classes and digital resources. One purpose-built plugin, instead of thirteen fighting each other. We now host and maintain the site as well.

• Custom WordPress rebuild, fast and mobile-first
• One custom plugin replacing 13 stacked plugins
• Automated order emails and details to buyers
• Automated login delivery to students
• WooCommerce for books and digital access
• Reliable, maintainable custom codebase
• Full Core Web Vitals and performance overhaul
• Ongoing hosting and maintenance

Faster, reliable, and growing

The rebuild paid off across the board. The automation the business runs on simply works now, the site is fast and stable, and the numbers followed. Since the rebuild, online sales are up 50% and organic traffic is up 75%, and Core Web Vitals went from struggling to excellent.