CHALLENGE

The leading world supplier of athletic shoes, clothing and sports equipment and subsidiary to Foot Locker Inc., required an eCommerce site that would support growth of 10-30% per year and have zero downtime.

Eastbay also requested a mobile delivery platform sharing the core components of the website to minimize development costs, time to market, and the functional gap between both mobile and web channels.

Eastbay needed a platform that would withstand the demands of flash traffic associated with promotional events, such as specialty Nike shoe launches; reduce delivery costs by verifying the shipping address via UPS during checkout; and, allowed customers to evaluate and purchase in-store inventory.

SOLUTION

Guidance designed and developed the website on ColdFusion 9 (presentation and application layer), Java (web services), Sybase 15 Database, and a Network Appliance NAS for shared code and content repository.

The site features a customized, user-friendly admin module to enable sophisticated marketers to drive daily site updates and promotions.

To accommodate flash sales traffic, Guidance created queuing systems, took advantage of load balancers, and developed a predefined set of inventory and capacity requirements to meet demand, and ensure stability and business continuity.

Greatly improving content merchandising and ultimately conversion, Guidance developed the “Athlete Resource Center.” Here, customers can access a sports library featuring exclusive videos, athlete interviews, buying guides, product reviews, training tips and more. Resources are broken down by sports and are focused on an elite level of play.

Guidance integrated the site with Core Metrics Reporting System, Sigma Micro (OMS) fulfillment system, F5BIP, Akamai (content delivery), Monetate Multivariate Testing, MyBuys (product recommendations and cross-selling), Dotomi (re-marketing), Google Maps (store locator), and Endeca (advanced search).

Guidance successfully optimized the website to appear first in Google search results for keyword “basketball shoes”.

INNOVATION

• Users are able to subscribe to Silver, Gold or Platinum levels of the “Eastbay Loyalty Club”. Subscribed members receive exclusive discounts, promotions, free shipping and a dedicated call-in number for questions and support.
• Shoe search is easier through an advanced filter. With Eastbay’s “Shoe Finder”, users are able to search by sport, feature, weight, brand, profile, outsole, surface, mechanic, type, price, color, event and/or gender.
• Guidance also developed the site to honor “advertised price” agreements with various brands, while maintaining Eastbay’s market competitiveness.  On the product detail page, users are offered the ability to view a possibly lower MSRP in their shopping cart.
• Guidance’s tight integration with order processing supports aggressive shipment metrics – 95% of orders ship within 24 hours at 99%+ accuracy – resulting in a 25% reduction in redelivery shipping costs.
• Users are able to select in store pick-up, resulting in increased customer satisfaction and a reduction in shipping costs.
• Users can access their wish lists, shopping cart, address book, credit card information and more, from the web or mobile sites, resulting in a superior user experience.
• A real-time reporting engine was also implemented to provide immediate online buying trends.