Selling Custom Aluminum Windows Online — Without Losing the Dealer
Alcast Online — a B2B configurator and ordering platform for aluminum facade systems
Overview
Alcast manufactures aluminum windows, doors, sliding systems, folding walls and facade systems out of Leunen in the Netherlands. They’re a Reynaers Aluminium dealer and have spent years building a reputation for custom, made-to-measure frames. The catch: almost all of that was happening over phone, email and in-person visits.
Alcast Online is the answer to that. It’s a dedicated dealer-facing ordering portal — a WordPress-based tool that lets installers configure profiles, pick glass types, add hardware, and place orders without ever having to send a PDF spec sheet to the factory.
The Challenge
The old setup worked, but it didn’t scale. Every order came in as a phone call or an email that someone on the production planning team had to decipher and re-key into the factory system. Mistakes happened. Orders sat in an inbox for hours before anyone saw them. And during renovation season, it was chaos.
There were a few layers to untangle before we could build anything sensible.
Configuration complexity
Aluminum frames aren’t a fixed SKU. Every order is a combination of profile system, dimensions, glass spec, colour, hardware, ventilation and finish. The site had to hold all of that without feeling like a CAD program.
Dealer-only pricing
Pricing depends on dealer tier, project volume and ongoing contracts. That logic couldn’t be exposed publicly, and it couldn’t be hard-coded either.
Factory integration
Orders needed to land in the production planning system with enough structured data that nobody had to re-enter them manually.
Trust on a B2B site
Installers are conservative buyers. The portal had to feel solid and predictable — not trendy.
Non-digital-native users
Plenty of dealers are skilled craftsmen, not power users of web apps. The UI had to stay simple even while doing heavy lifting behind the scenes.
Our Approach
We started with a week of on-site interviews at the Leunen factory, sitting in on order intake calls and watching how the planning team actually worked. The big insight: dealers weren’t looking for a fancy 3D configurator — they wanted a fast, predictable form where they could drop in measurements, pick the options they already knew by name, and be done.
That shaped the entire UX direction. Instead of a heavy single-page app, we built a stepped configurator inside WordPress using a custom plugin. Our WordPress development services team wrote the configurator logic, the pricing rules and the factory export layer from scratch — no off-the-shelf plugin was going to handle the rules matrix for Reynaers profiles.
Architecture was straightforward: WordPress as the content and auth layer, a custom plugin for the configurator, a dealer role model extending WP’s user system, and a scheduled job that pushes finalized orders into the factory planning system via a secure API bridge.
Solution Delivered
The finished portal covers the full ordering cycle. Dealers log in and land on a simple dashboard: active quotes, open orders, past projects, downloadable certificates. Starting a new order is three clicks away.
The configurator itself walks a dealer through product type (window, door, sliding, folding, facade), dimensions in millimetres, profile series, glass spec (standard, HR++, acoustic, safety), colour (RAL code), hardware set, and any add-ons. Pricing updates live as options are chosen, using the dealer’s own price tier. Each step is savable, so a rep can pause and come back without losing work.
Once an order is placed, the data lands in the factory system as structured JSON — panel dimensions, glass codes, hardware BOM, the lot. Production planning no longer has to interpret a handwritten fax. Error rates on intake dropped near to zero after the first month.
On the public-facing side (alcastonline.nl’s open pages), we also built a lightweight product catalog with SEO-friendly pages for each profile system and typical use-case. That gave Alcast a separate funnel for new-dealer acquisition, not just existing account servicing.
Glimpses of Alcast Online
Key Features
Stepped frame configurator
Type → dimensions → profile → glass → colour → hardware → review. No overwhelming single-page form.
Dealer-tier pricing engine
Saveable quotes
Draft an order, email it to the client, finalize later — all from inside the dealer dashboard.
Factory-ready export
Orders land in production planning as structured data. No re-keying.
RAL colour picker
Visual swatches with official RAL codes, so nobody argues about ‘beige’ versus ‘cream’.
Order history + documents
Past orders, invoices and technical certificates all in one place.
Dutch + English UI
Switchable interface for cross-border dealers.
Role-based access
Separate permissions for dealer-owner, dealer-staff and factory support.
Results and Outcomes
Six months after the full portal rolled out to the dealer network.
~ 85% online order adoption
Share of dealer orders flowing through the portal instead of phone/email.
– 92% order-intake errors
Near-zero mistakes on the factory side after the JSON export went live.
– 60% order-to-production time
Average hours from order placed to production slot booked, down from ~8h to ~3h.
+ 34% dealer satisfaction score
Internal NPS survey of the dealer network, six months post-launch.
15 new dealer sign-ups
In the first 90 days, driven by the public-facing catalog pages.
Technology Stack
A pragmatic stack built around WordPress, with custom code where the business logic actually lives.
WordPress (multisite-ready)
Core CMS and authentication layer.
Custom configurator plugin
Hand-written PHP plugin for product rules, pricing and order state.
PHP 8.2 / MySQL
Server-side; MySQL schema extended for dealer tiers and quote drafts.
Vue.js (for the configurator UI)
Lightweight front-end embedded inside the WP plugin.
REST API bridge
Scheduled push of finalized orders into the factory planning system.
Gravity Forms (dealer onboarding)
For new-dealer applications from public-facing pages.
WPML
Dutch / English language switching.
Hardened hosting
TLS, WAF, 2FA on admin logins — standard B2B baseline.
Conclusion
Alcast didn’t need a shiny site — it needed a working tool. The portal took something that used to live in phone calls and handwritten fax sheets and moved it into a system the whole dealer network can actually use. The factory floor is calmer, dealers get quotes out faster, and the public catalog is pulling in new accounts Alcast wouldn’t have reached otherwise.
If you’re running a B2B operation where the order is more complicated than a shopping cart, you probably don’t need another SaaS subscription. A well-built WordPress-based portal can do the job, cheaper, and with far less lock-in. That’s the kind of project where it pays to hire WordPress developers who understand business logic, not just themes.
