Case Study - Supercharging Global Sales for Subside Sports with a High-Performance Hyvä Frontend

The Client

Subside Sports is one of the world's leading online retailers of authentic football shirts, catering to a highly passionate global fanbase. Operating across multiple international domains and language stores, they offer everything from major tournament kits to niche club jerseys, complete with official player printing and badges.

The Challenge

In the football merchandising market, counterfeit products are a widespread issue. Subside Sports possesses a massive competitive advantage: they operate a bricks-and-mortar physical store in Germany and guarantee that every single shirt, badge, and transfer they sell is 100% authentic. However, their legacy frontend design was failing to effectively communicate this sense of trust and pedigree to new visitors.

Furthermore, the brand was facing severe technical limitations:

• Immersive Visuals: Subside Sports had secured a major partnership with Getty Images to access world-class sports photography, but their existing theme could not elegantly showcase these high-resolution assets.
• Global Administration: Managing custom content and translations across a complex web of regional domains and language stores was a heavy administrative burden.
• Legacy Constraints: The frontend needed a complete visual overhaul, but the architecture had to remain flexible as the team was still working within the boundaries of an off-site CRM.
• Mobile Performance: Real-world mobile user data showed that the site was severely bogged down by legacy frontend bloat, impacting conversion rates.

The Solution: An Empowering, Trust-Driven Build

We designed and engineered a brand-new frontend from the ground up, leveraging the lightweight power of Hyvä to completely transform the user experience while respecting their existing backend ecosystem.

• Designing for Authenticity: We structured the new visual identity around building instant consumer trust. The design prominently spotlights their German physical store and their strict "no knock-offs" policy. To capitalise on the Getty Images deal, we created a premium, image-forward layout where stunning match photography seamlessly drives product discovery.
• Total Content Control via Page Builder: To hand full creative control back to the Subside Sports team, everything was built using Magento's Page Builder. outer/edge designed and developed custom layouts, saving them as reusable templates so the client can easily spin up new designs without code.
• Bespoke Page Builder Components: We engineered custom plug-and-play components, including high-impact header hero sliders and promotional banners, allowing the team to easily refresh the homepage during major football tournaments or transfer windows.
• Streamlined Multi-Language Workflows: We unlocked the ability for the client to create and manage custom translations directly via the Magento admin. This allows them to instantly deploy localized copy to any specific domain or regional storefront on the fly.
• Future-Proof Integration: While optimizing the immediate user experience, we built the frontend with a forward-thinking architecture. The site is fully primed to unleash further automated functionalities the moment their off-site CRM updates are completed.

This website features

The Results

By comparing sales from the 3-months after launch to the previous year, the business impact of our intervention is clear:

Core Web Vitals

As you can see from the image below, the website's Core Web Vitals have gone from poor to perfect!