Project
MDT DESIGN
A WooCommerce store for a Melbourne jeweller who makes every piece by hand
MDT DESIGN is a family run jewellery house on Collins Street in the Melbourne CBD, founded in 1981 by master jeweller Nicholas Theochari. Everything they sell is made by hand in the workshop behind the boutique, which is unusual: most of the trade designs on a computer and sends the file out to be cast. That difference is the whole business, and the website has to carry it while also working as a real online store with hundreds of pieces in it.
Project Scope
- Custom WordPress theme development
- WooCommerce store and product templates
- Custom product filtering plugin
- Homepage design and build
- Content block library for the team
- Ongoing development and maintenance
The challenge
Someone shopping for an engagement ring is making one of the larger considered purchases of their life, usually without knowing much about diamonds, settings or metals when they start. They browse for weeks, they compare, and most of that happens on a phone late at night. The site has to hold their attention through all of it and then get them into the Collins Street boutique, because the actual sale happens at the bench.
That puts two things in tension. The catalogue is big, so it needs the filtering and navigation of a proper online store. But every piece in it is individually made, so it cannot feel like a warehouse of identical stock. Getting both out of the same build is the interesting part of the job.
What I built
A custom WordPress theme with WooCommerce underneath it, built with Vite and Tailwind rather than a page builder, and developed continuously since launch rather than handed over and forgotten.
A catalogue built for jewellery
Several hundred engagement rings, wedding rings and pieces of fine jewellery, each with its own metal options shown right on the product tile. A custom filtering plugin drives the sort and filter panel, so a shopper narrows by what actually matters to them instead of scrolling.
Navigation that fits the range
A mega menu that goes four levels deep, with hover delays so it does not flick open as the cursor crosses it, plus a site-wide search that opens over the page and returns paginated results. Both exist so a large catalogue never forces anyone to browse from the top.
Pages the team builds themselves
The homepage is assembled from purpose-built blocks: a video hero that opens the brand film in a lightbox, a category carousel, a featured products row. Marketing rearranges and refills them without a developer, and without being able to pull the design apart.
Kept running, not just launched
WordPress core and plugin patching, caching, deployments and new feature work all run through me. A store this size accumulates risk quickly if nobody is watching it, and most of what breaks on an eCommerce site breaks quietly.
Across the site
The catalogue, with sort, filter and metal options
The education library on a phone
The result
MDT DESIGN runs its whole online presence on this build: the catalogue, an education library of more than fifty guides to diamonds and settings, the enquiry and appointment paths that feed the Collins Street boutique, and the pages the team publishes week to week.
The work is ongoing. Rather than a launch and a handover, this has been a long running relationship of adding what the business needs next: a homepage rebuild, deeper menus, better product filtering, faster search, and the unglamorous maintenance that keeps a store of this size safe.
If you sell something considered, where the website has to do the convincing before anyone walks in or picks up the phone, I would like to hear about it. Have a look at how I approach WooCommerce development and WordPress website design, read about the Suncoast Express quote and booking system, or get in touch.
We had the absolute pleasure of working with Phil to build our new WordPress website, and the experience was outstanding from start to finish. Phil is an incredibly talented WordPress specialist who not only delivered a website that exceeded our expectations but also made the whole process stress-free and enjoyable. He was always easy to communicate with, quick to respond, and genuinely cared about getting everything just right for us. Nothing was ever too much trouble, and he patiently guided us through each stage of the build while keeping everything on track and meeting deadlines perfectly…
Common questions about this project
Yes, but not out of the box. Handmade jewellery is sold on metal, stone and finger size rather than a shelf of identical stock, so the product data model, the variation handling and the archive templates all needed custom work. The stock WooCommerce catalogue would have treated every ring like a t-shirt.
A custom product archive with a sort and filter panel, metal colour options visible on the tile itself, and a mega menu that goes four levels deep so a shopper can get to a specific style without landing on a page of 435 rings. There is also a site-wide search with paginated results for people who arrive knowing exactly what they want.
A page builder puts layout decisions in every editor's hands and slows the front end down. This site uses a custom theme with a library of purpose-built content blocks instead, so the marketing team can build pages freely without being able to break the design, and the pages stay fast.
Yes. I work with clients across Australia from a base in Geelong, which is about an hour from Melbourne. Retail eCommerce is a good fit for the work I do because the site is the shopfront and every change to it is measurable.
I do. WordPress core and plugin updates, caching, deployments and new development all run through me on an ongoing basis. For a store carrying hundreds of products, a site that is built once and then left alone is a security and performance problem waiting to happen.
Yes. Products, education articles, menus and page content are all managed by the MDT DESIGN team through WordPress. My work sits underneath that: the theme, the store behaviour, the blocks they build pages with, and anything new the business needs.
