Faktor Verlag – Custom Online Shop with Laravel and Vue

Faktor Verlag publishes technical books and themed magazines on architecture, technology, energy and sustainability – including standard works such as the "Heat Pumps" reference book. To distribute this programme, the publisher needed more than an off-the-shelf web shop: a shop that genuinely reflects print and digital products, subscriptions and the logistics processes of a publishing house.

The division of labour was clear: concept and design come from the publisher itself – we were responsible for the complete technical development in 2025. The result is an extensive custom online shop built on Laravel and Vue.js with a modular architecture: more than forty modules cover everything from products, cart and checkout to reporting and translation management.

The product logic is tailored to publishing needs: every title exists in variants such as print, e-book or bundle – ISBN-managed and each with its own fulfilment logic. E-books are delivered via activation codes, downloads are available in the customer account, and themed magazines can be purchased as individual or corporate subscriptions with variant-specific subscription prices.

The logistical centrepiece is the integration with the Swiss book centre (Buchzentrum): print orders are transmitted automatically via API after checkout – including customer data, payment method and language code – and the order number flows back into the shop. We also built the publishing team its own admin module for searching the book centre's catalogue and viewing and editing open orders directly in the backend. Payment runs via PostFinance Checkout with webhook processing or classically by invoice; address validation checks postcode and town already during checkout.

The entire shop is available in four languages (German, French, Italian, English) with a translation editor maintained in the backend. A queue-based fulfilment pipeline automatically sends invoices, download links and activation codes, the publishing team records phone orders via a dedicated interface – and keeps track with reports on sales, products and search queries.

The result is an e-commerce platform that digitalises the processes of a specialist publisher end to end – from the click in the shop to delivery by the book centre, largely automated and run by the publisher itself in day-to-day business.