The brief
Dolci di Luca is the B2C arm of I Love Group — the brand that sells fresh cannoli, dolce and Italian treats directly to consumers. Where I Love Group serves the business wholesale market, Dolci di Luca targets the private customer who wants to enjoy authentic Italian flavours at home.
The technical foundation was the same as for the B2B arm: a WordPress environment that had become increasingly unstable through years of use and poor maintenance. Slow load times, unexpected downtime and stalling indexing processes cost the team time every day. At the same time, the store no longer looked like the brand it wanted to be: colourful, playful and hip.
The brief to Web Builders: migrate the platform to Shopify, choose a theme that fits the Dolci di Luca brand personality, and build a stable foundation to grow on.
What we built
Migration from WordPress to Shopify
Just as with I Love Group, we started with a full inventory of the existing WordPress environment: product catalogue, category structure, customer data and URL structure. We then migrated everything to Shopify — without data loss and without taking the store offline during the migration.
All existing URLs were forwarded via 301 redirects to their Shopify equivalents, ensuring regular customers and existing bookmarks continued to work without issue.
Shopify Zing — premium theme tailored to the brand
For Dolci di Luca we deliberately chose Shopify Zing, a premium paid theme built for brands that want to make a visual impact. Zing offers playful typography, large hero sections, vivid colour blocks and a product presentation that suits a lifestyle brand in the food sector.
Together with our design partner Misegno we fully tailored the theme to the Dolci di Luca brand identity:
- Colour palette based on the packaging style: warm, colourful and inviting
- Typography and icons that match the playful Italian feel of the brand
- Homepage layout with a prominent hero, fresh-daily proposition and category navigation per product line
- Product pages set up with clean product shots on a white background, packaging information and a direct ordering option
PageSpeed: from red to green
The old WordPress installation suffered from the classic performance problems: overloaded plugins, unoptimised images and a slow hosting environment. During peak traffic the store regularly fell back to slow load times or temporary downtime — exactly when the most customers wanted to order.
On Shopify all performance optimisations run as standard: CDN delivery via Cloudflare, optimised images, minimal JavaScript footprint and built-in caching. The PageSpeed score rose to 90+ on desktop — a direct improvement for conversion and user experience.
URL structure and 404 prevention
For the migration we applied the same careful approach as with I Love Group:
- Full URL inventory before the migration — every path mapped
- Permanent 301 redirects for every old WordPress URL to its Shopify equivalent
- Canonical tags correctly set to prevent duplicate content
- Automated post-launch check for broken links and missing pages
Ready for the next phase
The Shopify foundation enables Dolci di Luca to quickly add new product lines and keep developing. Together with Dolci di Luca and Misegno we’re working on new product concepts: DIY Cannoli kits for customers to make at home, Cannoli spreads as standalone products, and other seasonal and themed launches.
Shopify makes it possible to roll out these kinds of extensions quickly and without technical risk — without every update triggering a new plugin conflict.
Outcome
Dolci di Luca now has a Shopify store that fits the brand: fast, visually strong and built to grow. Switching from an unstable WordPress environment to Shopify Zing was more than a technical migration — it was a complete upgrade of how the brand presents itself online.
The store loads quickly, never unexpectedly goes offline and delivers a brand experience that matches the energy and creativity of Dolci di Luca.
Curious how we migrate your WordPress store to Shopify? Or ready to get started? Schedule a free consultation.
