DHL ships custom WooCommerce plugin for global growth

This post was contributed by Shadi Manna, founder of Progressus, a member of Automattic’s Agency Partner Program. Progressus is a digital agency focused on WooCommerce development and custom WooCommerce integrations.

In the dynamic world of logistics, DHL is known for its efficient global shipping and transportation services.

But even industry giants face complex challenges. DHL faced significant obstacles. Without label services built into the fulfillment process, the company was losing significant revenue on parcel shipments from merchants in certain regions. DHL merchants lacked the ability to automatically create parcel labels for Europe and Asia, a critical feature for their growing customer base.

Recognizing the urgency of this issue and the huge potential of the WooCommerce seller base, DHL is a team of experienced WooCommerce backend experts with a keen focus on API integration and extensive experience in plugin development. We have partnered with Progressus. Progressus coded according to WordPress development standards and focused on testing to ensure we were building a high-quality, customized solution that not only addressed these shortcomings but also improved operational efficiency.

industry:Logistics

Use case: The main feature of this integration is to allow sellers to create DHL shipping labels directly from the WooCommerce order manager, meeting the needs of businesses of all sizes and enabling them to process millions of orders. It was to be.

Products used: Custom WordPress Plugin, WooCommerce

Main results:

Expanding service availability in Germany and meeting key market demands.
This custom plugin was quickly adopted by over 6,000 companies.
This facilitates the creation of over 2.4 million labels per year.
Customer feedback highlighted the effectiveness of the plugin, noting its robust functionality and contribution to streamlined operations.

DHL operates in a highly competitive and fast-paced industry where efficient management of supply chains and delivery services is paramount. With more than 380,000 employees and a presence in more than 220 countries, DHL manages the daunting task of delivering more than 1.5 billion parcels a year.

Being able to seamlessly integrate parcel labeling capabilities into our e-commerce services was not just convenient, it was essential to maintaining our market-leading position and ensuring customer satisfaction.

DHL’s predicament was unique. Our extensive network of medium to large enterprise customers has special expectations from DHL to seamlessly integrate package labeling within our WooCommerce-enabled e-commerce platform, especially for European and Asian markets. I did.

These merchants often chose WooCommerce as their e-commerce solution, especially because of its incredible flexibility and customizability. We also believe it is necessary to have a seamless label printing solution built-in. As a result, the merchant considered this to be a missing part of the service provided by DHL that it did not yet provide.

This capability gap created a serious obstacle to DHL’s smooth operations. Shadi Manna, Founder of Progressus, said: “The lack of a comprehensive DHL solution for labeling parcels in major markets posed special challenges and required a bespoke and robust solution. ” is clearly stated.

Creating a bespoke plugin for a DHL client was a seamless experience, mainly due to WooCommerce’s extensibility and high customizability. WooCommerce’s architecture is built on a foundation of fully flexible features such as hooks and filters, allowing for deep customization at every level. This flexibility helped DHL tailor the plugin to meet the specific needs of its operations.

Manna continued: “For example, this capability now allows us to precisely modify and extend our core functionality to accommodate DHL’s vast logistics network, whether integrating international DHL services to streamline the labeling process. Whether you want to enhance your order management, WooCommerce’s adaptable framework makes it possible.

Every aspect of the WooCommerce store, from the front-end user experience to back-end order processing, was meticulously tailored to DHL’s requirements. This level of customization not only allowed the bespoke plug-in to seamlessly integrate with DHL’s existing systems, but also improved overall operational efficiency.

Creating a bespoke plugin for a DHL client was a seamless experience, mainly due to WooCommerce’s extensibility and high customizability.

Progressus’ response to this challenge was comprehensive and meticulous. The team set out to develop a custom WordPress plugin that seamlessly integrated with WooCommerce and was tailored to meet DHL’s specific needs.

This plugin isn’t just a stopgap, it’s a full-fledged enhancement, allowing features such as insurance options, handling international packaging, and automatically issuing tracking numbers.

Based on WooCommerce best practices, the plugin was built using object-oriented data structures. This approach has ensured scalability and flexibility in the integration of the countries involved, and has significantly optimized DHL’s workflow efficiency.

The modular nature of WooCommerce allows Progressus to develop solutions that can easily adapt to different requirements in different regions, and allows the plugin to grow and evolve as DHL’s global operations expand. It has become.

This level of customization and adaptability is a testament to the power of WooCommerce’s extensible framework, allowing developers to create highly customized solutions that meet the specific needs of large global companies like DHL. can.

Since partnering with Progressus in 2017, the success of our collaboration with DHL has been demonstrated by impressive statistics and customer feedback. The basis for this success was the rapid implementation of custom plug-ins, which have been integrated into the operations of more than 6,000 companies in Germany. This widespread adoption is a testament to the effectiveness of the plugin and that it addresses a pressing need in the market.

DHL was able to leverage the vast WooCommerce network to expand its customer base and increase parcel sales. The existence of a seamless labeling solution has enabled us to offer services that rival carriers cannot offer, providing the perfect sales tool for WooCommerce merchants to swap carriers.

Since its release, this plugin has facilitated the creation of over 2.4 million labels from scratch annually. This important number not only proves the functionality and reliability of WooCommerce and the plugin, but also highlights its role in streamlining the business processes of many companies.

“The impact of this development is particularly evident in Germany, where DHL’s service capabilities have been significantly expanded to effectively meet the important demands of this key market,” said Shadi Mana.

Client feedback further highlights the success of the project. “Releases are always on schedule, quick response to needs, quick troubleshooting, very good exchange of ideas, optimization of features, etc. Very focused, proactive, smart.”

Businesses appreciate the robust features of this WooCommerce-built plugin, helping them streamline their operations and increase efficiency. This positive rating is a clear indicator not only of WooCommerce’s durability and stability, but also that the plugin is in line with users’ needs and serves to improve the overall experience of DHL services.

The DHL and Progressus partnership is characterized by a commitment to continuous innovation. The team is actively working on incorporating new features such as GoGreen Plus and moving from a SOAP API to a REST API to modernize and enhance performance.

The bespoke plugin initially also included multiple global regions, but separate plugins were created to address these areas to improve efficiency and performance.

Regular strategy meetings allow us to continue to focus on development by prioritizing features that bring significant value to our sellers and testing them rigorously before deployment.

This case study exemplifies more than just a problem-solving effort. This highlights a synergistic partnership driven by innovation and a deep understanding of the demands of the logistics industry. The collaboration between DHL and Progressus is a testament to the power of strategic partnerships to overcome technical hurdles and improve operational capabilities with WooCommerce.

As DHL continues to address the complexities of global logistics, our partnership with Progressus is a beacon of our commitment to continuous improvement and excellence in our WooCommerce solutions.