The challenge:
PHPA's mandate was to attract more viewers, players and buyers (hockey
enthusiasts, collectors and players) to its Web site (www.phpa.com) by
incorporating the following features:
A secure forum for players to access important and timely information about
their contracts, benefit plans and other miscellaneous items;
An online offering of industry-related products for sale to extend the PHPA
brand;
An expanded kids' area with interactive and educational games;
An e-commerce addition to handle online transactions for PHPA and sponsors'
products;
An administrative back-end allowing PHPA staff to maintain and update the
product database as well as manage customer relationships;
A regular hockey-news update;
A product inventory control system.
The rainmaker's response:
Digital Rain worked with a number of strategic partners to attract Tier 1
sponsors such as US Airways, DuPont, Geo-PalsTM and RBC Dominion Securities.
Once sponsorships were contracted, we built a high-end professional e-commerce
site.
Among the site highlights are:
A new design to respond to the predominantly male target audience
Interactivity, such a goalie game, animated hockey drills and so on
An e-commerce area where visitors can purchase hockey memorabilia, cards, books
and tickets for special events
Simplified and intuitive navigation
An application that allows PHPA employees to modify the site
Custom web applications using Active Server Pages (ASP) with Microsoft Server
Commerce Edition
What this meant to PHPA:
Two days after the site's launch, product orders were already increasing
The site now sees a substantial increase in unique visitors a month
A system that provides customer buying history and the ability to personalize
email, event notices and sales, as well as send thank you notes to customers.
