Tesco Controls

The problem

Tesco Controls maintains a large, highly technical product catalog with many interrelated products, options, and configurations. Their internal marketing team needed to keep this catalog up to date as products evolved, new lines were introduced, and documentation changed. However, the existing site structure and content management approach made even small updates slow and error-prone.

Product information was scattered across separate pages and hard-coded layouts, with limited structure behind the scenes. Creating or updating a product often required developer intervention to wire up relationships, adjust templates, or ensure consistency across the catalog. This created a bottleneck: marketing couldn’t iterate quickly, and development time was being spent on routine content changes instead of higher-value work.

Solution

I designed and implemented a robust custom post type architecture for the product catalog, centered around structured content and relationships rather than ad-hoc pages. Each product became its own structured entry, backed by multiple hierarchical taxonomies to represent categories, families, applications, and other logical groupings. Related database content—such as specifications, compatible accessories, and documentation—was modeled in a way that the system could automatically surface the right connections.

On the front end, I built flexible, reusable layouts powered by Advanced Custom Fields to give editors clear, guided ways to compose rich product pages without touching code. The marketing team could create and update products, assign them to taxonomies, and manage related items directly within the CMS. From a full-stack perspective, I was responsible for the data modeling, CMS setup, template development, and integration of the structured fields into a cohesive front-end experience that made the catalog easier to navigate for end users and much easier to maintain internally.

Challenges

One key challenge was modeling the complex relationships among products so that they were both technically accurate and editor-friendly. I iterated on the taxonomy and custom field design with stakeholders, simplifying where possible and using hierarchical structures to reflect how marketing and sales actually talk about the product lines.

Another challenge was migrating existing, inconsistent product content into the new structured model. I created scripts and mapping strategies to convert legacy content into the new custom post types and taxonomies, followed by a review process to catch edge cases and ensure that critical relationships (like compatible components) were preserved.

Finally, enabling a small marketing team to handle the majority of catalog changes without developers required a careful balance of flexibility and guardrails. I used Advanced Custom Fields to create intuitive field groups and layouts, added contextual help text, and standardized templates so editors had the freedom to update content while the design and structural integrity of the catalog remained consistent.

Outcomes

Helped the marketing team handle the majority of product catalog updates independently, significantly reducing reliance on developer time.

Improved the consistency and discoverability of products across the catalog, making it easier for users to find related items and product families.

Contributed to a smoother content workflow, reducing manual rework and errors when adding or updating complex product information.