TexMetals.com: a Modern eCommerce website

Texas Precious Metals launched a Modern eCommerce website in 2024—launching forth a best-in-class customer experience.

Executive Summary

Texas Precious Metals' goal was to enhance customer experience and support future growth, and SwiftOtter delivered.

While we offered several options, TPM selected the Modern eCommerce route: incredible SEO, a lightning-fast user experience, and best-in-class content generation capabilities. This approach provided TPM with a flexible, scalable, high-performance platform, positioning them for continued success in the precious metals industry.

See the transformation for yourself:

About Texas Precious Metals

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Shiner, Texas, Texas Precious Metals (TPM) is a subsidiary of Kaspar Companies and has grown to become one of the largest and most reputable precious metals dealers in the U.S. With USD billions in transactions and more than many, many thousands of orders shipped across all 50 states, TPM offers a range of gold, silver, and platinum bullion products. A hallmark item in their lineup is the Texas Silver Round, a signature product that reflects both the company’s brand and Texas pride.

What sets TPM apart from competitors is their unwavering focus on low premiums, transparency, and exceptional service. The company introduced the Texas Precious Metals Depository in 2018, offering secure, fully insured storage backed by Lloyd’s of London. This facility caters to individuals, IRA custodians, and institutions, emphasizing TPM’s dedication to safeguarding customer investments with industry-leading protection.

TPM’s success has earned them multiple accolades, including recognition from Texas A&M University as the fastest-growing Aggie-led business and a place on Inc. Magazine’s list of the fastest-growing private companies in America. Guided by the motto "Pure and simple®," TPM’s mission is to provide unmatched value through fanatical customer service, low premiums, superior products, and easy ordering, setting a high standard in the precious metals industry.

Home Page Highlight

There is no comparison of old/new. The old was difficult to read, with too much information clammoring for visitors' attention. The new is fast, visually engaging, and easy to browse.

Click and drag the slider left and right to see the difference first-hand.

The Challenge

After years of using Magento, TPM sought to revamp its front-end customer experience, envisioning expanding content and scaling its operations in the future. TPM partnered with a design team it had previously worked with to develop wireframes and prototypes that would define the new user interface and customer journey.

When it came time to implement the designs, TPM turned to SwiftOtter, a trusted partner with whom they had completed multiple large-scale projects. SwiftOtter had already delivered complex solutions for TPM, including a custom WebSockets integration and a fully customized checkout experience within Magento. Given this history of collaboration and trust, TPM was confident in SwiftOtter’s ability to bring the new design to life.

SwiftOtter presented multiple strategies for implementing Texas Precious Metals' (TPM) updated designs, focusing on flexibility, scalability, and performance. One option was to use a Luma-based theme, a tried-and-tested framework that integrates seamlessly with Magento’s backend. While Luma offers reliability within a monolithic architecture, it fell short in supporting long-term content expansion and scalable growth, which are key priorities for TPM.

SwiftOtter also evaluated Hyvä Themes as an alternative front-end solution for TPM. Hyvä offers a modern, lightweight framework for Magento, focused on performance and simplicity. In contrast to Luma, Hyvä minimizes reliance on heavy JavaScript libraries, resulting in faster load times and a more seamless user experience—both essential for ecommerce success. Its streamlined architecture also lowers maintenance costs and simplifies future updates. However, given TPM’s plans for aggressive growth and the need for a more modular and scalable solution, Hyvä was not the optimal choice.

Recognizing TPM’s need for a future-proof architecture, SwiftOtter ultimately recommended a composable approach. TPM would retain Magento as the backend in this scenario while introducing a GraphCommerce-powered front end for dynamic ecommerce experiences. Contentful, a powerful headless CMS, would handle content management, giving TPM greater flexibility to scale and update content quickly. This composable approach offers the best of both worlds—high performance with GraphCommerce, robust content management with Contentful, and the stability of Magento for backend operations.

By offering a range of solutions, from Luma’s traditional structure to Hyvä’s performance-first design and the modular flexibility of a composable architecture, SwiftOtter ensured TPM had the insights needed to make an informed decision. This thoughtful evaluation reflects SwiftOtter’s commitment to delivering scalable, future-ready solutions that align with TPM’s evolving business goals and digital strategy.

Category Page Highlight

The difference between these two pages is other-worldly. The old had so much information on it, that visitors found it difficult to understand the page's purpose. This new design subliminally highlights Texas Precious Metal's focus on quality and customer care.

The Solution

TPM chose to follow SwiftOtter’s recommendation by adopting a composable architecture—a modern, modular solution that integrates specialized systems for distinct elements of the ecommerce experience. This architecture offers the agility, scalability, and high performance necessary to support TPM’s evolving needs and long-term business goals.

At the core, Magento continues to function as the backend, managing order processing, transactions, and product data, ensuring operational stability. On the front end, TPM embraced GraphCommerce, a React- and Next.js-based front-end framework that interacts with Magento through GraphQL APIs, purpose-built for headless ecommerce. This framework delivers fast, dynamic storefronts by using GraphQL to fetch only the required data, optimizing performance and improving the user experience across devices. The modular nature of React allows TPM to easily experiment, customize, and deploy new features without impacting backend operations.

For content management, TPM integrated Contentful, a headless CMS that decouples content from the presentation layer. This setup enables TPM’s internal team to manage and update content independently, reducing the need for developer involvement. With Contentful, TPM can easily publish product pages, promotions, and other content across multiple channels, ensuring the site remains fresh and relevant.

This composable solution provides TPM with several key advantages:

• Performance and adaptability through GraphCommerce’s React and GraphQL-powered framework.
• Scalable, user-friendly content management via Contentful.
• Backend stability and continuity through Magento’s proven infrastructure.

The combination of GraphCommerce, Contentful, and Magento ensures that TPM’s eCommerce platform is future-proof and agile, enabling them to scale, integrate new technologies, and continuously innovate while staying ahead of customer expectations and market trends​.

Key Implementations of the Project

Product Page Highlight

Every pixel of the product is perfectly adjusted to combine into a stunning, integrated view of each coin. Texas Precious Metal's value proposition is on display. Prices are clearly stated, with the option to increase quantities for a better price.

The Road Ahead

TPM is committed to leveraging its new, high-performance architecture to enhance its digital presence and expand content offerings. A key focus for the future is growing the Depository division and building out its online persona to attract more individual and institutional clients.

They also plan to introduce a limit order feature on texmetals.com, enabling customers to automate purchases when the spot price of precious metals reaches their predefined thresholds. Furthermore, TPM is developing a wholesale trading platform to facilitate B2B transactions, allowing dealers to buy and sell precious metals in bulk. This initiative will capitalize on TPM’s existing infrastructure, including pricing engines and premium management systems, to enhance operational efficiency.

The Outcome

With the implementation of its composable architecture using Magento, GraphCommerce, and Contentful, Texas Precious Metals (TPM) is well-equipped to scale operations, meet evolving market demands, and enhance the customer experience. The new platform lays a solid foundation for future growth, enabling TPM to focus on key business initiatives such as expanding their Depository division, introducing advanced features like limit orders, and building a B2B wholesale trading platform for bulk precious metals transactions.

Through a combination of strategic foresight and technological innovation, TPM is not only meeting the demands of today’s customers but also preparing for long-term success. The new architecture offers the agility, performance, and scalability required to stay competitive in the fast-evolving ecommerce and precious metals landscape. TPM’s partnership with SwiftOtter has laid the groundwork for continuous growth, ensuring the company can innovate, attract new clients, and capture new opportunities in both retail and B2B markets.