Space48 Logo
Military 1st

Military 1st: Turning marginal gains into massive growth.

Despite extraordinary growth since launching in 2008, specialist online outdoor and combat clothing retailer Military 1st was still leaving money on the table. You may recognise the scenario – your ecommerce platform and ecommerce partner are helping you make good money, but they’re actually costing you big money too.

With a website hindering rather than enabling growth, an ecommerce partner unable to deliver important innovation and with Military 1st targeting a super ambitious 50% year-on-year international growth something had to be done.

So they turned to Space 48 for a complete design, build and Magento replatforming.

A design, build and replatforming project that would not only enhance existing bespoke functionality and maintain scalability, but that would implement much-needed performance improvements and very importantly protect and strengthen hard-won SEO rankings.

Military-1st

Space 48 know-what. Space48 know-how.

As one of only a handful of UK agencies with the necessary in-house blend of technical and commercial skills, we worked closely with Michael and his team to both conceive and deliver a suite of highly effective technical, CX, UX and performance innovations.

Innovations that saw us double targeted international conversion rates to an astonishing a 53.3% with YOY revenue skyrocketing by 54.1% across the international storefronts and Average Order Value increased by 3.2%.

Because there is no silver bullet

Five websites servicing the UK, USA, Australia, Europe and Ireland were launched on 19th June 2018. With all five sites running from a single Magento 2 installation, we delivered the following marginal games that have powered such massive growth:

Magento Cloud Hosting – The website is hosted on Magento’s very own AWS-based cloud hosting solution for a joined-up Magento experience.

Product Feeds – Flexible data feed management module to generate feeds for Google Shopping, AdWords, Display Network and Criteo; with the flexibility to easily add more feeds as required.

Responsive Grid Framework with Responsive Images – Responsive blocks/grid system to allow Military 1st to build highly customised CMS pages using simple HTML.

Country-Specific Offering – Country-specific categories and range, with SEO-friendly country and language-specific URLs.

Bespoke UX Enrichment – Ensuring the website uses UX best practices without creating the wrong impression of the price point.

This series of smart performance wins saw:
  • 17.8% reduction in page load speed across international storefronts – 7.8% higher than target.
  • 21.3% decrease in bounce rate
  • 126.5% increase in website traffic by an across all sites.
  • 53.3% international conversion rate increase
  • 350% ROI (Extra Gross Revenue Generated / Project Cost) figures.

“My plan was for Military 1st to become a global supplier of combat and outdoor gear. Our existing ecommerce site at the time was nowhere near robust enough to perform internationally and meet the growth trajectory I wanted for the business.

We could not have picked a better team of professionals to deliver the project.”

Michael Grzybowski, Managing Director, Military 1st

Military-1st

Kinetica: A superior Shopify Plus site engineered for market expansion.

How Space 48 gave sports nutrition brand Kinetica Sport a state-of-the-art website that paved the ‘whey’ for market expansion.

Learn More

Ultra LEDs: A flash BigCommerce site for Ultra LEDs to brighten up their profits.

How Space 48 constructed a flash Big Commerce site for Ultra LEDs to brighten up their ecommerce.

Learn More

Wholesale Domestic: A paid ad strategy that achieved a 27% increase in ROAS.

How Space 48 took Wholesale Domestic’s Google Ads strategy from standard to slick to achieve a 27% increase in ROAS.

Wholesale Domestic-cropped-image Learn More