McSport.ie
In 2008, McSport approached Magico for the design and development of a new eCommerce Website as they made the business move from traditional retail to the online channel.
The development of an online presence for this retailer provided an interesting challenge for the Magico Team, with a product range that ran into thousands and a need to design a website that would appeal to a vast range of clients including Club Coaches and Officers, Teachers right down to individual sports enthusiasts.
Creating an Attractive Online Shopping Experience
As with all eCommerce projects, Magico began this new project with a detailed eCommerce Workshop where we worked closely with McSport to get a clear view of their key target audiences/customers. We reviewed international sports shops with a view to identifying good practice and gave a lot of time to developing the navigation tools of the site ensuring that the information on the site can be accessed by each target audience in as short a time as possible.
The solution was built on Magico's propriety online shopping cart solution MagiSHOP. A secure e-commerce website design that's search engine friendly providing clients with a feature-rich e-commerce software solution. Magico owns 100% of the source code for this product which allows us to customise the solution to meet specific requirements such as that of www.mcsport.ie.
This feature-rich e-commerce solution includes some of the following functionality:
- Categories, Sub Categories, Product and Version sorting
- Product search
- Order tracking
- Integration with our online payments partner, Realex Payments
- Intelligent "Related Product" suggestion capability
- Built-in Promotions Configuration, eliminating the need for discount codes and allowing the facility to feature products
- Ability to customise the Checkout experience to exactly what the client needs, while retaining the benefits of a Best Practice Techniques
- Built-in SEO optimisation - each individual Product/Service produces its own customised title tag and description tag content
- Customer account, Saved Baskets & order tracking
Additional Features:
Ease of Navigation:
With a range of product that ran into thousands, ease of navigation through the site for the many types of customer was crucial. Magico provided navigation tools such as:
- Shop by Category which displayed across the top horizontal navigation bar
- Shop by Brand
- Keyword search facility
- Shop by activity which displayed down the left hand side navigation on all pages of the site
Online Product Merchandising:
Magico always start an e-commerce project by looking in detail at the end-customers' needs, i.e. what do they need to know before they can make a buying decision.
When purchasing online, the way that Product Merchandising is presented is critical to the success of the project. This includes strong product photography, copywriting and periodic promotions. Many sites fall down because they don't invest enough time and effort into online product merchandising. In the case of McSport, strong quality imagery helps greatly to drive customers purchasing decisions.
Dynamic Homepage: The home page of all ecommerce sites need to be engaging and dynamic for users visiting the site. It must clearly communicate the products options available to visitors. On McSport, potential customers can select from:
- Featured Products
- Bestsellers
- New promotions
- Their preferred sports activity or sports brand.
For all your sporting needs, check out McSport for yourself www.mcsport.ie.
What our client said:
"One of challenges on this project was the vast range of specialist sports products that we stock. Magico's knowledge of online customer needs, design and Web usability has created an easy-to-follow shopping experience. We also benefit from orders that may start online as an email enquiry but may require a personal tailor-made quotation.
Overall we are delighted with the response from customers who visit McSport.ie."
Philip McLaughlin, Managing Director, McSport
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