Masters of Their Sport

3D Sports was originally established in 1971 as a mail-order cricket equipment specialist and today is still run by a team of club cricketers and former professionals. Over the years, their competitive edge has been their ability to offer quality first-hand advice on everything cricket-related. With their main focus brand being Kookaburra Sport, one of the best well-known global brands in cricket equipment, 3D Sport has become the go-to reseller in the UK.

When they approach our digital development and SEO agency, their eCommerce site was tired and suffered from a lack of focus on conversion and non-existent user journey optimisation. They approached Brave Agency to create a more fluid and intuitive site experience that offers easy in-house control on the back-end so that they could be 100% self-sufficient in making swift changes and updates.

Expertise Delivered

  • Wireframing, UX/UI Web Design
  • CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation)
  • WordPress & WooCommerce
  • SEO, Social Media & PPC Google Ads

Business Location

  • Northamptonshire

Our SEO Performance So far...

+ 74 %

Year on Year Page 1 Keywords

+ 32 %

Organic Revenue up

+ 28 %

Increase in Organic Conversion rate

74% increase in SEO keywords on page #1 YoY

A 74% increase in page 1 organic keywords year-on-year isn’t to be sniffed at. Taking over the SEO for 3dSports, involved a combination of our gap analysis review of keywords vs their competitor’s rankings. Personas need to be considered, targeted, and content pillar tactics planned to utilise a keyword cluster strategy. Once identified, a technical application process was implemented which kickstarted our journey to reach a strong year one increase in keywords ranking on page #1 YoY! To date and we continue to deliver.

A Multi-Functional Website Experience

If you’re in eCommerce, your website experience must leave zero room for error. The 3D Sports online store had to be robust to support its fast-paced distribution business. Their existing site, built on Magento, was clunky – it did the job but was running end-of-life. They were growing frustrated with the backend of that platform and felt the site lacked design polish and operational excellence.

Fixing the design was no problem, but creating the optimal user experience that could be easily managed by their internal team was a greater challenge. However, we knew what needed to be done and tailored this around their operational infrastructure to make their lives easier.

A Flexible eCommerce Platform

As a distributor, 3D Sports needed to manage data and inventory from many different sources pooling into their online store. Their team needed the flexibility to toggle products and the speed to configure content offers at a moment’s notice. Additionally, their price-savvy customers expected a seamless user experience complete with powerful filtering and search options.

This meant that the Brave web design and development team had to leverage their front-end and back-end experience and opt for a bespoke open-source solution called WooCommerce. One of the leading eCommerce platforms out there, it has become widely supported by an international community.

As a result of building, executing and optimising to 3D Sport’s brief, they can better serve their customers and increase search engine authority with one of the best eCommerce stores in their industry.

Our PPC Performance So far...

+ 620 %

Paid Revenue up YoY

+ 344 %

Paid Conversions Up % YoY

+ 69 %

Paid Conversion Rate up YoY

Using CRO to Analyse, design, develop & Experiment

Our CRO Service primarily was introduced to improve conversion and revenue, remove risk of site enhancements, innovate to stay ahead of the competition, lower customer acquisition cost by using data rather than guesswork and “gut feeling or opinions”.

As well as in-depth eCommerce and traffic data analysis, we have also been monitoring how users are behaving on the 3D Sports website using advanced software. This, alongside a qualitative and quantitative research program, has enabled us and the client to gain real-time feedback from users as soon as they make a purchase.

The CRO Process Summary

  • User journey analysis (segmentation and mapping of the current user journey, examined by an expert to see where UX improvements can be made)
  • Traffic data analysis (all about current user behaviour, heat map analysis, form tracking analysis, e-commerce data analysis)
  • CRO Recommendations to dev and design
  • Planning and scheduling recommendations
  • Website Go-live day
  • Post SEO activity, checks and analysis
  • CRO Recommendations to dev and design begin again monthly

The Outcome of CRO

The results from this CRO monitoring have driven significant optimisations to the 3D Sports website, in turn increasing its conversion rate. We look forward to giving 3D Sports even more conversion potential, continuing with our CRO strategy which includes launching a successful referral scheme, and A/B testing on their website.

What’s important with CRO is knowing what is causing friction for your users, and understanding your customers’ emotional nuances and behaviours which COMES FROM optimising the buying experience using psychology, experimentation, and personalisation.

Our CRO Agency Performance So far...

+ 0.98 %

Conversion rate Up

- 7.3 %

Reduction in Bounce rate

+ 32 %

In Organic SEO Revenue

Technical SEO and Keyword Strategy

Before the website build started, our SEO agency team worked to perform comprehensive SEO keyword research and develop an information architecture. It was vital to pinpoint which meaningful and converting “golden keywords” to target to build web traffic and extend the company’s online reach from launch. The new sitemap streamlined information finding and enhanced user experience whilst planning from a technical SEO point of view eased the content transfer from the previous Magento platform to guarantee page redirects were carefully planned out.

Elevated Design and Custom Features

Our initial conversations with the client highlighted the desire to modernise everything about their website design and structure to a much higher level – they aspired to build something similar to that of major sports brands that eloquently execute from a direct-to-consumer point of view. We developed a mood board to pinpoint the design direction and highlighted every requested custom aesthetic feature with the customer journey in mind. According to the client, it had to be easy to add an item to the cart, favourite, compare and even share with others.

Mood boarding these elements informed our design throughout the site, including the promo offer banners and custom furniture. Making 3D Sport’s categories appear more accessible fast and understandable was a key component of the new site.

What's Next for Growth?

3D Sports’ website no longer has a tired look and feel. Now they’re presented in the right light, they’re a market leader that others can chase. They can now effortlessly process thousands of orders per week, and both wholesale and DTC revenue streams are growing at a healthy rate. With Brave’s ongoing digital growth strategies that cover eCommerce SEO, Google Ads and Social, 3D Sports are in the midst of the exponential growth they once desired.

Looking for an eCommerce
Hyper-growth Growth Agency?

Take a look at some of our other success stories below.

More Work