hmv’s eCommerce store is now more powerful than ever.

Following their acquisition by Sunrise Records, hmv have been working with Ridgeway as their digital agency to extend and manage their existing eCommerce solution and provide a more streamlined user journey. The enhanced website has now been accelerated with a Kentico DXP v13 update which went live in time for the peak season of Black Friday and the Christmas period.

Ridgeway has worked in partnership with hmv since 2014 when the home of entertainment launched its very first eCommerce store. The online store has gone from strength to strength with traffic, transactions and revenue increasing year on year.

The new solution has been built upon the latest version of Kentico DXP, v13 (MVC .NET), which provides the team with enhanced features which have been carefully crafted to deliver content to users quickly. 

Stocking over 61,000 products, the new platform is built using the latest tech stack (Azure App Services and micro-services architecture) which provides improved performance and reduced load times, with pages responding in less than 0.105 seconds.  

With over 80,000 pages Kentico offers hmv an ideal, technically robust platform to cope with a site of this size whilst delivering great site speed and performance.

In addition to the platform upgrade, hmv needed a more streamlined checkout journey, particularly for mobile users. The Ridgeway team have designed and built a faster checkout which shortens the journey from up to four to just two steps. The new checkout also features a summary banner, a delete option and the ability to modify product quantity for a more user-friendly experience. A basket upsell feature has also been added displaying "Have you considered" products. This has been custom built and is based on the product catalogue data to encourage users to explore more products before purchase. 

Black Friday is the busiest day of the year for the hmv team and this year was no exception. The auto scaling Microsoft Azure hosted site seamlessly handled over 150,000 users on the day itself with a peak of >6,000 concurrent users and achieving an eCommerce conversion rate of 3.75%.

Terry Roffey, Retail and eCommerce Applications Manager, says:

“Performance plays a major role in our success. Having a high-performing site is vital to engage and retain our customers. The upgrade to Kentico V13 has meant we are able to provide the fast, smooth online experience our users expect.”

Simon Cole, Managing Director, Ridgeway says:

“It has been a pleasure working with the hmv team over the last 8 years and see their eCommerce site go from strength to strength. The latest version of Kentico will provide even more opportunity and the team are reaping the benefits already."

The hmv team will continue to work with Ridgeway on lots more exciting developments in 2022!