For the Dutch football club SC Heerenveen, their fan community has always been a top priority. That's why providing the fans with an extraordinary online experience became a must-have when building a new e-commerce solution.
SC Heerenveen is a Dutch football club, founded in the Frisian town of Heerenveen in 1920. Over the years, the club has reached many milestones. Among the most important are receiving a promotion to the Dutch Premier League (“Eredivisie”) in the 1989/1990 season, winning the Dutch Cup in 2009, and launching successful careers of multiple legendary players, including Abe Lenstra.
SC Heerenveen was no stranger to the online world, having been digitally present for over a decade. However, their website, online store, and the infrastructure supporting them were not being updated regularly. This resulted in an old-fashioned interface and poor user experience, both on the frontend and the backend.
Facing quite a handful of upgrades, improvements, and fixes in making the e-commerce solution look fresh and up-to-date, the Dutch football club decided to go all in and build a new webshop from scratch. The aim: creating a unique and optimal experience for their most loyal fan community.
Modernization of
the User Interface
Integrating content
and commerce
Personalizing the experience for
the club's fan community
The e-commerce solution SC Heerenveen was looking for was a mobile-first, responsive webshop. The platform should give them the flexibility to change and adjust its elements independently at any time. At the same time, it should be easy to use for the digital merchant, and fully integrated with the CMS.
The club received help in the development process from the Dutch company Tres, who recommended Umbraco as an open-source Content Management System that could fulfil their need for independence, with Ucommerce being the best e-commerce solution in Umbraco’s offer.
The works on SC Heerenveen’s new web store began in May 2020 and, despite the global pandemic delaying the process, the solution was ready to go live by the beginning of 2021.
Integrating the webshop with the CMS allowed SC Heerenveen to target their fans in a more efficient way, e.g. by adding specific product suggestions next to a relevant piece of content. With the new, fresh look, the user experience has largely improved both for the visitors as well as the club’s digital team managing the store on a daily basis.
Apart from the modern and intuitive user interface, Ucommerce provided SC Heerenveen with essential and easy to implement e-commerce features, especially various discount possibilities which, although crucial for their target group, were not available in the club’s old solution.
Despite the ongoing pandemic situation restricting the club’s engagement with their fans, SC Heerenveen has already noticed a 20% increase in traffic since the launch of the new online store, the number went up to 50% during their Valentine's Day campaign.
We are one of the football clubs with the highest level of the online fan experience in the Netherlands, and we are happy that Ucommerce helps us make it happen.
Although the revamp of the webshop was a turning point for SC Heerenveen, the club considers it to be only the first out of two parts of their e-commerce development. By the start of the second football season of the year, in August 2021, they are planning to personalize their digital experience on an even larger scale and kickstart a new loyalty program.
Their aim is to make it possible for their supporters to create accounts on their website and receive unique deals, discounts, and product suggestions based on their preferences and previous activity. This way, they will strengthen their bond with their fans and thank them for their devotion.
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