Are you a sports fan? If you love the feeling of an energetic, packed stadium, then you know firsthand how important it is to rep your favorite player’s jersey or your home team’s baseball cap.
And that merch is a BIG business.
According to Fortune Business Insights, the sports apparel industry was valued at over $200 billion in 2023. And who’s the star quarterback of the sports apparel industry? The go-to destination for your favorite team’s gear, accessories, and gifts? The fast-as-Mahomes site with the official NFL, MLB, NBA, MLS, and NHL swag? (Wow, we sports people really like acronyms!)
It’s Rally House.
With over 200 stores, thousands of localized products, and millions of customers, Rally House is a staple for sports fans all across America.
But guess what? Three years ago, Rally House was not at Mahomes status. Their store was plagued by performance problems, including poor site speed and frequent outages at high-traffic (and high-value) times, like huge sporting events.
Imagine! It’s the final touchdown of the big game, and hundreds of thousands of fans flock to your site within seconds to snag their favorite player’s jersey. And then, BOOM. The website crashes.
The problem: finding the right teammate
The limitations of their existing SuiteCommerce solution forced Rally House to compromise on essential UX best practices, frustrating customers and majorly hindering sales. To get on their a-game, they needed a powerful ecommerce platform that could keep up with their increasing demand and adapt, like any good team player, to fit their dynamic business.
Enter Miva.
We stormed onto the field with a fresh ecommerce playbook for Rally House. Here’s what our winning play looked like for this sports apparel superstar.
The ecommerce playbook
- A deep data and process analysis to fully understand Rally House's data needs, flows, and integrations
- A snappy and appealing online shopping experience designed to keep up with the robust needs of a massive inventory and extremely time-sensitive promotions
- A NetSuite integration so the Rally House team could quickly get updates and manage their expansive catalog effectively
- A new store locator to support brick-and-mortar locations from the website, powered by Moz Local and Uberall, giving Rally House an edge over their competitors
- No preset limits on API calls, either in quantity or rate of request, thanks to Miva’s high-performance solution, specifically designed for large catalogs
- An easy-to-use PageBuilder tool, giving Rally House's marketing team direct control over site content for the first time!
- Speed! According to Google, Rally House's new Miva site speed improved by a massive 57%
Game-winning ecommerce results
By teaming up with Miva as a true partner, instead of using a clunky off-the-shelf solution, Rally House saw results that are almost too good to be true.
123%
Monthly revenue increase
17.59%
Conversion rate increase
59.44%
Transactions increase
39.90%
AOV Increase
Across the board, Rally House's results exceeded their expectations, with outstanding performance improvements and a surge in conversions. Just three months after the site launch, Rally House experienced dramatic increases in revenue, conversion rate, number of transactions, and average order value.
Any ecommerce expert can tell you that a 123% revenue increase is… a total touchdown!
The need for speed
For Rally House, we knew we needed to prioritize speed above all else. Sales needed to be ready at a touchdown’s notice. Products published at the drop of a championship title. And “winning” swag had to reflect the actual winner, in real time.
Our ecommerce experts partnered with Searchspring, a search and merchandising engine, to increase the reliability and speed of time-sensitive product launches. On game days, the right set of winning products can now launch at top speeds with the click of a button, delighting fans (and employees!) everywhere.
According to Google, this was a BIG win! Rally House recorded a 57% increase in ****site performance speed.
And seeing as fans are always on their phones, documenting their favorite game, of course, we couldn’t forget about mobile site speed! We ramped up the mobile site performance by a whopping 52%! A total win for a brand and business with a need for speed.
The lineup: ecommerce integrations & tools
A fast website and seamless shopping experience are great, but what happens when the ecommerce pros are done and it’s back in Rally House’s court?
That’s the best part of partnering with Miva. We’re a true partner throughout the entire process, not leaving you in the dust with tech your team doesn’t understand.
For Rally House, we wanted to give the marketing and content teams total control over creating and managing high-quality website pages without the hassle and expense of needing developers for every tiny change. Miva's easy-to-use PageBuilder tool makes this a snap! Now, Rally House's marketing team has direct control over site content for the first time, making campaigns and promotions a seamless process on both the front and back end.
Some of the other key ecommerce players and integrations that contributed to Rally House’s 123% monthly revenue increase?
- Searchspring
- Uberall
- Moz Local
The clear winner for large catalog brands looking to scale
If your site is bogged down by thousands of hard-to-find SKUs and scalability seems like a pipe dream, we hear you. Thanks to a massive catalog size, time-sensitive sales, and sudden traffic surges, the ecommerce game was not stacked in Rally House’s favor either!
Run-of-the-mill ecommerce solutions would have wasted precious time and resources for the hardworking team at Rally House. By partnering with Miva, they gained a winning playbook, coach, team, and cheerleaders, all rolled into one—a true partner for ecommerce scalability.
Now THAT is a win for Rally House, Miva, and fans everywhere.
When you’re ready to migrate to a new ecommerce platform and get your site on its A-game, our free guide to migrating ecommerce platforms might make your decision easier.
Download it here.
