Development platform and services improve reliability, ease-of-use, scalability and extensibility for more than 100 online properties

Development platform and services improve reliability, ease-of-use, scalability and extensibility for more than 100 online properties

Sportsdirect.com, the UK’s number one sports retailer by revenue and profit, has standardised on the web content management platform from DotNetNuke for over 100 of its online properties, including USC, Lillywhites, Field & Trek, Dunlop, Slazenger, Lonsdale and Karrimor.

Cantarus, a DotNetNuke Gold Certified Partner and a leading system integrator in the UK for the Microsoft .NET-based web content management system (CMS), was selected to provide development, integration and training services for Sportsdirect.com.

Maintaining brand consistency

By standardising on DotNetNuke, has enabled Sportsdirect.com’s developers to rapidly modify specific web applications and design templates for individual brands, while maintaining consistency across multiple sites. The company also plans to use DotNetNuke 6.2’s social capabilities to implement user ratings and reviews as its sites are migrated to the platform.

“Sportsdirect.com’s online business is an important, rapidly growing retail channel for our company, increasing 83% over the past year,” said Jay Lyford, Sportsdirect.com IT manager. “The Olympic Games have created a tremendous spike in interest for sports and sporting goods, generating a surge in demand for our brands online. We needed to strengthen our online infrastructure to better handle the volume of traffic and transactions. DotNetNuke's web development framework and CMS was chosen because it easily integrates with our existing systems, allows us to redeploy sites quickly and enables us to scale to meet growing demand."

Scaling to meet demand

Sportsdirect.com’s network of websites currently receives in excess of 436,000 peak daily visitors and 7.7 million page views per day. The existing platform did not scale well and ultimately struggled to cope with the demands placed upon the sites. The move to DotNetNuke will support this scale and enable the future expansion plans for Sportsdirect.com’s online presence.

Sportsdirect.com is working with DotNetNuke partner Cantarus to build and redeploy its websites using DotNetNuke’s platform and tools. Cantarus has collaborated with the CMS provider and Sportsdirect.com to architect a solution tailored to the retailer’s complex, technical and demanding business requirements.

Additionally, Cantarus’ DotNetNuke experts have helped Sportsdirect.com optimise the platform for the company’s transactional e-commerce back end and to achieve zero downtime during upgrades and system maintenance.