Building ORCA's home appliance e-commerce platform from scratch on WordPress

ORCA is the consumer electronics arm of AKIJ — one of Bangladesh's largest conglomerates — selling home appliances across 15+ categories, from air conditioners and freezers to kitchen and personal care appliances. As part of the broader AKIJ digital ecosystem, ORCA needed a standalone e-commerce platform that could carry the trust the AKIJ name brings while functioning as a full-featured online appliance store. The brief was a from-scratch site capable of handling deep product catalogs, supporting the long consideration cycle that appliance buyers go through (compare, wishlist, browse, then call before buying), and giving the team direct control over products, categories, and promotions — without dev cycles for every catalog update.

I built ORCA from scratch on WordPress with WooCommerce as the store engine, Woodmart as the theme foundation, and Elementor for design flexibility. The stack was chosen specifically because Woodmart ships with the e-commerce primitives appliance shoppers expect — product comparison, wishlist, quick view, advanced filtering — without months of custom development for each one.

• Category architecture for 15+ appliance lines (Air Conditioner, Air Fryer, Air Purifier, Chest Freezer, Coffee Maker, Dishwasher, Iron, Hair Dryer, and more) with filtering and search

• Woodmart theme customized to ORCA's brand identity, not left as a default template build

• Product comparison, wishlist, and quick-view features — essential for the appliance buyer journey, where buyers cross-shop heavily before purchasing

• Hotline (08000555777) and email contact prominent across the site for assisted-sale conversions, since appliance buyers in Bangladesh typically call before transacting on a high-ticket purchase

• Customer accounts with order history and wishlist persistence across sessions

• WooCommerce backend giving the ORCA team full control over products, categories, pricing, and seasonal promotions

ORCA now runs as a fully owned e-commerce platform — live at akijce.com, with the full appliance catalog browsable, comparable, and purchasable online. The team can launch new products, update categories, and run seasonal promotions without engineering involvement. The platform sits inside the broader AKIJ digital ecosystem as the consumer electronics storefront, carrying the AKIJ trust signal into a category — home appliances — where trust is the single biggest factor in whether a customer clicks "buy" or picks up the phone.