We delivered a full restructure, redesign, and platform upgrade for Jacobs the Jewellers: a modern Umbraco site with Umbraco Commerce, a Lit-based web component front end, CI/CD to Umbraco Cloud, and continued EPOS integration so the shop floor and the website stay aligned.

Context

The earlier Jacobs site used Merchello for e-commerce and custom integration so Encore could push products and pull orders. The new project replaces that stack with Umbraco Commerce on the latest Umbraco generation, while preserving the business need: no manual re-keying of catalogue or orders between web and EPOS.

Alongside the platform upgrade, the site was fully redesigned to better reflect Jacobs' in-store experience, improve usability across devices, and provide a more flexible foundation for ongoing brand and content evolution.

Moving off legacy e-commerce and an older CMS footprint meant addressing accumulated technical debt while transitioning to a supported, cloud-ready platform. At the same time, Jacobs’ operational setup remained unchanged—the Encore EPOS system continues to run in-store, requiring the website to function as a seamless extension without introducing duplicate data entry. Alongside this, the project needed to deliver a refreshed, brand-led experience with a responsive, user-friendly interface, supported by a front end that teams can confidently maintain and evolve. Ensuring reliable delivery was also key, with a focus on predictable builds, automated testing, and consistent deployment processes aligned with Umbraco Cloud and semantic versioning.

Encore remains the central source of product data, with the website automatically reflecting updates through the integration—removing the need for manual imports or duplication. Online orders can flow directly back into the EPOS system, helping streamline in-store processes and reduce administrative effort. By moving to a modern Umbraco Commerce setup aligned with current Umbraco releases, the platform is now easier to maintain, extend, and keep secure compared to the previous legacy approach. On the front end, a component-based approach improves consistency and speeds up future changes while reducing the risk of regressions. Altogether, improved CI/CD and cloud-based workflows provide clearer, more reliable processes from development through to live deployment.

Jacobs still treat the website as an extension of the showroom. This rebuild keeps that vision while upgrading the engine—Umbraco Commerce, Encore-connected APIs, and a component-based front end delivered through automated pipelines to Umbraco Cloud.