In our opinion, there is nothing more lifestyle than a football club. Football fans are the epitome of loyalty and engagement, and that's no different for Hearts FC.

There has been a shift in football ecommerce in recent years, and while you'll always see fans flock to their grounds in hats, scarves and shirts, Clubs are now really doubling down on the ecommerce experience and user journey. Hearts FC have gone a step further than this, opening the world of pledging and hospitality and flexing the bounds of both commercial revenue and of their chosen platform, Shopify.

Heart of Midlothian Football Club (commonly known as Hearts) is the oldest Club in Edinburgh. Competing in the top Scottish division, Hearts is also the largest fan-owned Club in the UK and the third biggest Club in Scotland. 

Boasting a rich history, dating back to 1874, when a group of friends bought a ball and started playing football, Hearts is now the most successful Club in the Scottish capital, consisting of a foundation, restaurant and hotel. 

Over the course of two years, Hearts has gone through a digital transformation and chosen to take that journey with Shopify as their choice of platform, and Velstar as their agency. 

This move, along with work we have performed for Feyenoord, Newcastle United and others, has highlighted to us how football Clubs are beginning to realise their performance on the pitch is not the only performance that matters - online performance and interaction can accelerate a Clubs’ reach and revenue - even helping to expand their fan base (we haven’t included it in the results section,, but we’re quite proud that their US sessions for Hearts Direct are up 180% and that they’ve seen triple digit increases in several continental EU countries).

Hearts were using outdated legacy, and costly technology to run multiple sites, which was hampering their day to day operations and stalling the growth of the club online, along with a poor return on investment with their tech stack.

The club realised they needed to undertake a serious digital transformation, which took place across Hearts FC, Hearts Direct, Foundation of Hearts and Tynecastle Park Hotel. 

• Hearts FC - A predominantly content-based site, consisting of Club, team and community news, fixtures and tickets. The main site you would go to for anything Hearts related. 
• Hearts Direct - Hearts Direct is an online shop, primarily a transactional store. This is where you would buy the Club kits, training wear, gifts and branded merchandise. 
• Foundation of Hearts - Foundation of Hearts is the charitable organisation linked with the football Club that takes pledges from members to fund a variety of community-focused initiatives.
• Tynecastle Park Hotel - Tynecastle Park Hotel is a hotel located at Hearts FC stadium, offering a restaurant, as well as a range of experiences and event spaces. 

We’ll deep dive into the specifics of each site but first let’s paint you a picture. All the Club’s  frustrations were built over a number of years, particularly when the world went into lockdown and our attention turned towards the digital space and the Club realised the importance of bringing its operations up to speed.

It was then that Hearts decided they needed a platform that would be: 

• Easy to use
• Quick to market for 
• Lower the cost of ownership
• Be flexible across the Club’s needs  
• Have everything centralised in one place 

Hearts quickly realised Shopify alongside some snazzy custom work with Velstar, would be the answer to their problems. Starting with the Club’s content site, followed by the online store, the Foundation of Hearts and finishing with the hotel’s website. 

In fact it was such a success, it didn’t stop there…

Hearts is the UK's largest fan-owned football club and, as a result, the organisation takes pledges from members to fund a variety of community-focused initiatives through Foundation of Hearts.

Foundation of Hearts was a unique proposition to bring onto Shopify. The previous site was built 10 years ago, with Umbraco and GoCardless, and needed to be brought up to modern times to fulfil the Club’s needs. That coupled with the fact that they needed to target a new demographic, to encourage younger fans to pledge to the club, meant it was time to step up the game - pun intended.

In order to ensure a smooth transition to Shopify, our development team imported donor points from the previous platform, Umbraco. Along with the migration of points and historical spend data, we also transferred the bank mandates for customer subscriptions, integrating them into Shopify’s financial infrastructure, Stripe. 

The main areas of the site refresh included: 

• A new design, in line with the work done on the existing site, which meant Velstar could use the existing work done with the shop and content site, using the sections built flexibly
• A subscription basis to handle the pledging element of the website’s infrastructure, using Shopify’s native subscriptions
• A engaging login area, that would represent the pledging activity and the rewards associated with their efforts 
• An age verification checker 

Since working with Shopify the team have seen an increase in engagement, a better reporting system and connection to other elements of the internal Hearts business operations. 

Due to the success of the three sites on Shopify, Hearts decided that their new hotel, based in the stadium itself, was a great opportunity to capitalise on all the hard work that had been done so far with Shopify. 

Having built an asset rich library of websites, content and sections, the Club was able to repurpose the existing Hearts FC and Direct sites, to quickly mould a new site that would serve their hotel, with some additional sections put into service the difference in offering.  

Not only did our long term partnership make this simpler to achieve, it was also super fast. In total, it took four weeks to design and build, before they were ready to push the hotel website live. 

This digital transformation really highlights the power of Shopify and the importance of having a Shopify agency in your corner.

To summarise, the efforts over the last two years were to: 

• Create a user friendly interface and experience 
• Streamline operations
• Simplify reporting
• Offer a POS solution linking what is sold in-store compared to online
• Revamp and attract a younger audience (to the Foundation of Hearts  in particular) 
• Transform their pledging system to accept pledges through Shopify Subscriptions (Foundation of Hearts) 
• Generate more revenue for the Club 
• Integrate the technology 
• Provide user-friendly software 
• Allow for personalisation on a range of products (Hearts Direct) 

Velstar, knowing how important each element was to Hearts, and that the flexibility was key to expand their Shopify portfolio, we were able to to work collaboratively with the brief in mind. The design, front and backend development team got to work offering a unified approach, and ensuring to capture the presence and passion of the Club across all sites, and continues to provide the site maintenance across all areas as the season progresses.