5 common eCommerce hurdles in the sports industry

When people think of eCommerce, they often picture straightforward online storefronts. In reality, eCommerce is a broad and evolving ecosystem made up of specialist sectors—each with its own demands, pressures, and opportunities. The sports commerce industry is a prime example of this complexity. From sudden surges in traffic driven by live events to highly volatile inventory, it operates at a pace and scale that few other sectors experience.

The UK eCommerce market ranks third-leading in the world and continues to grow steadily, with the equipment and fitness retail market generating £1.5 billion alone. But as digital channels become the primary touchpoints for fans, sports organisations and retailers are under increasing pressure to deliver seamless, high-performance online experiences.

With this growth comes a new wave of challenges – and significant opportunity. As specialists in Adobe Commerce, we work closely with brands navigating pressures every day.

1. Site traffic

Your eCommerce store needs to support the people using it. Scaling involves ensuring the behaviour of your website is consistent even as the number of users onsite increases. For example, if your platform loads in under two seconds when 500,000 users visit a month, you still want it to load in under two seconds once this number reaches one million.

Your site needs to be able to cope with both planned and unplanned peaks:

• Plannedpeak:Whenplanned product drops and live eventsgeneratemajor traffic onsite. For example, when the latestseasonskit is released.
• Unplanned peak:Thesetrafficincreasescan’tbe predicted. Examples could include a new team signing, multiple goals in a single match by a player or your team doing particularly well. During unplanned peaks, your eCommerce store must be able tomobilisequickly withoutcrashing.

Lewis Sellers, CEO at IDHL, shared further insight into this common issue:

“Think about football clubs. They release their new seasons kit and can go from having 500 users on their website to 25,000 in a very short space of time. If they’re not prepared for this, this is when they will experience site instability and common challenges of getting orders through payment gateways, distribution issues or syncing stock updates with the website.”

If your website can’t cope with the increase, performance issues rear their ugly heads from slow loading times and functionality to full site crashes. But how do you plan for the unplannable?

The fix

The reasons behind traffic fluctuations are endless. But some tools are better than most at helping your business through unexpected peaks:

• New Relic:This tool allows you to breakdown how a page is being loaded. UsingNew Relic, you can walk through your website stage by stage to see what percentage of usage is being assigned where.Pages can be investigated ahead ofpublish,providingthe opportunity to make them as streamlined as can beandtrack problems as they arise. 
• Queue-it:Website crashes can lead to bad publicity, but this is manageable withsystems likeQueue-it.Thisvirtual waiting room lets you control traffic and prevent yoursitecrashing. When the site comes under too much strain, a queuing system begins, taking the edge off the serverloadand preserving brand integrity.
  Even better, Queue-it offers various features to make the waiting room experience moreengaging,including popular productshowcases, social proof,andqueuenumbers.
• thinkTribe:UsingthinkTribe, you can confidently prepare for your busiest times through load and performance testing.Youcantest using real-life userscenarios onhow many users can hit the site before it overloads and crashes.

2. Managing inventory

Effectively managing your inventory can have a huge impact on eCommerce success. It ensures you have the right products in the right quantities, helping to avoid products selling out or cash being tied up in excess stock.

However, sporting businesses, in particular, can get tied up in inventory knots for a number of reasons:

• Personalisation:Many football clubs allow fans topurchasefootball shirts that can becustomisedwith different letters and numbers. Having a system in place that allows you to manage this stock with ease ensuressupplydoesn’tfallshort.
• Multichannel buying:Clubs may have a physical store as well as an online one tomanagestock. In this case, do you choose to use the same system to manage stock for both channelsorare online orders fulfilled from shop stock?
• New kit launches:If a sports club launches a new kit, they need topurchasetheoptimumamount for their fan base. If they sell out in a matter of hours, conversion opportunities are lost and with it, revenue.

The fix

We would recommend using a robust inventory system that syncs stock updates automatically. Alternatively, you could also use a system that has the ability to turn off this feature altogether and allow Adobe Commerce to handle the stock count during busy periods.

There’s no one size fits all solution to this challenge – our system recommendations all depend on your unique requirements and the challenges you face.

3. An international audience

Some sports clubs have fan bases all over the world. With such far-reaching audiences comes common international challenges:

• Inventory management for different regions:Let’s say you’re shopping for a football shirt from a UK team but you’re in the US-does the shopper use the UK store and ship the item to the delivery address in the US or do they go to the US store and pay in dollars?
• Translation for international markets:It’scrucial that your eCommerce store is effectively translated to the country. The use of translation tools alone is often not reliable enough to produce credible,relevantand well-written copy and could damageshoppertrust.
• Localisedpayment currencies and options:It’sa tell-tale sign of a poor user experience when the currencydoesn’treflect the shopping region. Offeringlocalisedcurrency should be a top priority if your brandoperatesinternationally. Alongside this, we alsoadviseofferinglocalisedpaymentoptions.
• Country selection: Your customers should have the freedom to select which country they are shoppingfrom. When thisselectionis made, the language and currency should automatically update accordingly.
• Tax considerations:Handling tax correctly across multiple countries should also be a top consideration. For example, ifyou’reshipping from the UK to Australia,USand Europe, how will you handle tax and custom duty? Do you wait for the customer to be charged onimport,or can you work this into yourcheckoutsoit’sprepaid?

The fix

Find an eCommerce platform that can support all your internationalisation needs! Adobe Commerce, for example, has major advantages for international retailers thanks to its multi-store functionality.

You can run several stores from a single admin interface while sharing the same backend and codebase to streamline management. Localised sites can even share customer data or keep it separate, depending on your preferences. Adobe Commerce also offers greater flexibility when it comes to custom pricing, language, tax and shipping to ensure your customer gets the expected experience wherever they’re browsing.

4. Processing personal data

Sporting bodies commonly work with multiple partners which can involve a lot of data being passed through your systems. When using a third-party platform, such as Nosto or Klevu, these systems will place cookies on your website for which users can manage their preferences.

If they choose to opt out, it’s your responsibility to block the cookie to protect the customer’s data. If this isn’t implemented correctly, you can face GDPR fines and negative impacts on your brand’s reputation.

The fix

This is where a platform such as OneTrust comes into the picture. As shoppers become more privacy aware, it’s all the more important to be transparent with their data collection and usage.

Providing privacy management services, OneTrust handles cookie consent and provides choice for consent and marketing preferences. A powerful and easy-to-use platform, you can capture, centralise, manage and sync consent, preferences and first-party customer data while keeping trust and transparency at the forefront of your operations.

5. Integrating omnichannel experience

When it comes to the sport industry, your eCommerce offering may be isolated from the rest of your website to make it easier to manage. However, the challenge appears when a club decides they want to sell tickets online or memberships. You need to consider how these different channels connect and how they can seamlessly integrate.

The relationships between the different channels, such as season ticket holders being able to apply their discount in the club shop and the online store, also must be taken into account.

The fix

The solution is in the middleware. Middleware allows you to connect multiple systems together. Our experts have created our own in-house middleware platform – DataConnectr.

Once integrated with your eCommerce store, DataConnectr works 24/7 to push and pull data from any external services such as websites, marketplaces, ERP systems and WMS systems to transform the handling data process.

Another system known as Single Sign On (SSO) could also be used in this scenario. Enabling users to have one login for multiple systems, they can sign in with ease to whichever area of the site they need to access.

Scoring goals with IDHL

Success in the sporting industry requires more than a standard eCommerce approach. It demands agility, scalability, and a deep understanding of how sport and commerce intersect. 

Fortunately, our team has plenty of experience working with renowned football clubs, Leeds United amongst them. To find out more about how we build high-performing platforms that keep pace with both your fans and ambitions, get in touch today.