BigCommerce Puts Rock Bottom Golf in the Zone
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22%
increase in AOV
27%
increase in new users
16%
increase in site visits
Diving for Dollars
There are those adventurous types who like to go deep water diving to search for hidden treasures. Some dive for precious jewels and others for ancient coins. And then there are those, like Tom Rath, who go to unknown depths to recover the ever elusive golf ball.
It may sound funny, but early in Tom’s life he recognized the value of these golf course pearls. As a youth, he turned diving for golf balls into diving for dollars. He would clean them up to sell on eBay and to local golfers. As the years passed he began selling golf clubs on eBay as well. Somewhere in the middle of it all a business was born. You see, Tom Rath is the Founder and CEO of Rock Bottom Golf.
First Tee
As told by Brian Schwank, Director of Marketing, Rock Bottom Golf.
Selling on eBay is where things began for Rock Bottom Golf. It was eBay only for the first couple of years and then we launched a website on Yahoo Stores. After that, we built an integration for Amazon and started selling there as well. That’s pretty much how we got our start.
We stayed on Yahoo for a long time. It was stable and did what we needed it to do, except for one important thing and that was to scale with us. At the time our business model was very much discount- and outlet-focused, but we outgrew the platform’s capabilities and features and that led us to search for a new platform.
“It was when we migrated to BigCommerce that we started to add a bit more complexity to our website.”
Brian Schwank Rock Bottom Golf, Director of Marketing.
Moving Beyond the Hackers
As told by Brian Schwank, Director of Marketing, Rock Bottom Golf.
In addition to BigCommerce, we looked at Shopify, Demandware and Magento. Shopify wasn’t a good fit because BigCommerce had better integrations with our key partners at the time. Demandware was too expensive and Magento lacked ease of use and had the potential to become expensive very quickly. With Magento it just seemed like we would need two or three in-house developers just to manage the platform.
On the other hand, BigCommerce opened the door to possibilities for us. We came onboard about the time BigCommerce released its Stencil theme, which was a big attraction for us. The platform [BigCommerce] proved to be a big step up from Yahoo. It offered better promotions and an easier way to manage the catalog and the website in general. It was when we migrated to BigCommerce that we started to add a bit more complexity to our website.
Hitting a Hole in One
As told by Brian Schwank, Director of Marketing, Rock Bottom Golf.
We’ve been on BigCommerce since 2015. For the first few years we just took advantage of features that were natively built into BigCommerce. Now we’re more about integrating apps and even building our own through the open API to enhance our product offering through personalization and customization.
For instance, since we launched on BigCommerce, customers have been able to personalize their golf balls and even customize club sets right online and checkout with them. Kevin, our Chief Technology Officer, worked a lot on the Cash for Clubs trade-in functionality and I know that's integrated into BigCommerce.
As told by Brian Schwank, Director of Marketing, Rock Bottom Golf.
Being able to use the API for various integrations that we have with other third-party systems and our own internal apps has been a huge plus for us. The openness of the platform has given us new avenues and new revenue channels.
“Now we’re more about integrating apps and even building our own through the open API to enhance our product offering through personalization and customization.”
Brian Schwank Rock Bottom Golf, Director of Marketing Manager
“The openness of the platform has given us new avenues and new revenue channels.”
Kevin Reester Rock Bottom Golf, Chief Technology Officer
“The platform [BigCommerce] proved to be a big step up from Yahoo. It offered better promotions and an easier way to manage the catalog and the website in general.”
Brian Schwank Rock Bottom Golf, Director of Marketing
Meet the Team that’s on the Green
As told by Brian Schwank, Director of Marketing, Rock Bottom Golf.
One of the top apps we’re using right now is ShipperHQ. It’s been a huge help by allowing us to modify our shipping rates exactly how we need to. Another is our loyalty and rewards program built by Practical Data. It allows customers to earn points on purchases and leave product reviews.
Our Cash for Club program is run by an easy little app where a customer can choose what club to trade-in, add it to the cart and from there it's just like a normal checkout process. We've actually put some new marketing efforts around it where we guarantee the best price and quicker payment. From time to time we'll give a bonus when a customer selects store credit over a cash payout, which sends even more traffic to our website.
As told by Kevin Reester, Chief Technology Officer, Rock Bottom Golf.
Also, we’re using Avalara to automate our sales tax processing and Braintree as our payment processor. Braintree allows us to bring fraud detection tools online. This is a huge benefit for our service team because they used to do all of the fraud checks manually. So having that in our suite of tools has been a great benefit on the customer service side.
Our website is the biggest marketplace for us followed by Amazon and eBay. We have a big social presence out there. And of course, when you talk about Google Shopping or Google AdWords, we do all that as well as display advertising and retargeting. Also, during certain times in the year, affiliate and newsletter marketing is huge for us.
As told by Brian Antczak, CEO, IntuitSolutions.
Rock Bottom Golf replatformed to BigCommerce in 2015 to take advantage of a more scalable SaaS solution and began to identify some unique opportunities to improve the user experience of its site. In 2016, Rock Bottom Golf engaged IntuitSolutions to develop and implement custom solutions to its website, and we haven’t looked back since.
For the past five years IntuitSolutions has worked regularly with the Rock Bottom Golf team to specify, refine and implement creative solutions and customizations on the BigCommerce platform. Our work is diverse. It has ranged from ongoing optimization to improve the UX and SEO to architecting complicated customizations that enable the personalization and preview of products sold on the website.
We continue to update and innovate with the Rock Bottom team. The results have been a smooth and productive working relationship that is reflected in the continued growth, efficiency and capabilities of the website.
“Our website is the biggest marketplace for us followed by Amazon and eBay.”
Kevin Reester Rock Bottom Golf, Chief Technology Officer Manager
Advancing Our “A” Game
As told by Brian Schwank, Director of Marketing, Rock Bottom Golf.
Moving forward Rock Bottom Golf is focused on customization and bringing more of the different areas of our websites together so they sync better. Earning rewards points on trade-ins and golf bag personalization are a couple of ideas we will continue to expand on.
We’ll be looking to implement innovative strategies to increase average order on purchases and getting the most from our current, and potentially future, Golf Channel television commercials.
I know I mentioned earlier, we were kind of the discount guys growing up and the discount website for golf. And now, that kind of inventory is just not available anymore. So having a trade-in where we can take in pre-owned equipment and put that through the process of shining it up, restoring it and then reselling it, is what I see as our discount merchandise these days.
Being on BigCommerce, an open SaaS, open API platform, which enables us to build our own apps, have an online trade-in program, the ability to personalize golf balls and customize clubs, has and will be great for us in the years to come.
