Sporting Saint
Modernising an e-commerce website to a trade-ready, high-performance platform.
Smarter, Faster, Better
Sporting Saint is an established and market-leading supplier of gundog training equipment. They approached eighteen73 seeking a comprehensive rebuild of their e-commerce site and a replacement for their integrated back-office warehouse management platform, which was built as part of the same legacy system as their website.
The new platform needed to focus on easier administration and an improved user experience for a diverse audience that included retailers, clubs, wholesale traders, international distributors, and younger markets such as social media ambassadors and influencers. Sporting Saint wanted to continue the growth of their digital channels, streamline their admin and back-office processes, provide a better customer experience (especially for trade customers), and reinforce Sporting Saint’s image as an innovative market leader.
The Challenge
As market-leading gundog training equipment suppliers, Sporting Saint faced significant technical growth-pains: their existing e-commerce site and back-office warehouse management platform was combined in a custom-built technical solution. This was complex and expensive to maintain, update and grow, and no longer met their evolving business needs.
There was a clear need to continue to grow sales through the website and provide a better customer experience that catered for more diverse customer segments. Sporting Saint also needed to reinforce their image as an innovative market leader, partly by delivering an exceptional experience to their influential trade customer-base.
Solving The Problem
In order to confirm all projects consider the needs of real users from the outset, we begin with a discovery phase that aims to ultimately balance user needs with commercial and business goalxs. For Sporting Saint, this included researching and advising on the integrations best suited to align the new system with their old. We needed to ensure existing digital business processes could be supported but added via a more flexible modular approach, with WooCommerce as a core framework able to provide scalability and easier administration. We also researched back-office management options and worked with Sporting Saint to help make a decision that would have the most benefit across their business.
- Modernised the brand and UI, prioritising user-friendliness with reusable patterns for improved shopping and account management.
- Enhanced Trade Section: Developed a dedicated trade portal for bulk purchases, saved products, and easy access to communications/invoices.
- Efficient Admin Order System: Created a custom WooCommerce plugin for staff to quickly process phone/offline orders, with auto-assigned and adjustable pricing.
- Sponsorship & Puppy Packs: Developed a custom form for sponsorship requests, allowing clients to add free/premium products and pay for delivery, with backend tracking.
- Robust Statistics & Reporting: Provided detailed sales data by trade/retail, date range, displayed in charts/graphs.
- Ongoing SEO & Digital Marketing: eighteen73 provides continuous SEO marketing, competitor analysis, and improvement suggestions.
What We Achieved
Sporting Saint has much more flexible control of the site in support of ongoing marketing campaigns and staff are able to use a stable and future-proof platform to place phone and offline orders effectively and efficiently through the new admin system. This has helped speed-up and consolidate the time their team spends processing orders.
Aesthetically, the overall design maintains brand continuity while providing a more contemporary refresh with improved spacing and colours. Building on this success, eighteen73 provide ongoing SEO and digital marketing services so that UX, marketing and performance can be improved proactively. Sporting Saint’s new e-commerce platform has streamlined internal processes, increased engagement and sales, and provided flexible control for marketing. Staff efficiently manage orders on a stable, future-proof platform. The modern back-office supports expansion into other sales channels with consolidated inventory. The design maintains brand continuity with a contemporary refresh.
The rebuild of our e-commerce site and replacement of our warehouse management platform has been a game-changer for Sporting Saint. The new system has dramatically improved our operational efficiency, streamlined the customer experience, especially for our trade clients, and positioned us as an innovative market leader in gundog training equipment.
The ease of administration and enhanced user experience are exactly what we needed to support our continued growth.
Why We Love
Sporting Saint
We admire Sporting Saint’s dedication to being market leaders and their vision to embrace innovative digital solutions.
We consider ourselves integrated delivery partners and are immensely satisfied that our collaboration has not only helped modernised their operations but also contributed to solidifying their position as an innovative force in their industry.
