Precor Fitness
Custom Drupal and Magento® Websites
Since 1995, Precor has been a fitness industry leader, manufacturing some of the world’s most popular ellipticals, treadmills, and other exercise machines. But in 2009, they were struggling with their online store. E-commerce was a centerpiece of the new marketing strategy, but they did not have the platform to support their anticipated growth. The store needed to manage high-end products with a large number of features and attributes. In addition, it had to serve the needs both of the commercial direct sales market and general consumer sales —in 5 regions, 12 languages and 48 countries.
The Precor marketing team had big dreams for their new site. They knew their brand and knew how to present their products. They had a clear vision for how the new Precor.com should look and how it should work. The only thing they lacked was the technical chops to execute their ideas.
Initially, Precor began working with a large digital marketing agency to overhaul their site. The agency worked for nearly a year before delivering an Ubercart-based e-commerce site. But when the store finally went live, it didn’t deliver the functionality the agency had promised. Frustrated, Precor came to us, in need of a new development partner.
Custom Magento Store and Drupal CMS Solution
Rather than attempt to re-engineer the Ubercart site, we immediately pitched a rebuild. Precor’s first priority was a store that could handle their sales and product volume. Coming in at a close second, though, was a good management system for their substantial collection of editorial content. After a brief scoping period, we steered them toward Magento and Drupal.
Managing an Integrated Magento eCommerce and Drupal CMS Website
Five months later, the new Precor.com went live. With a tight Magento/Drupal integration, we delivered a seamless experience for site visitors while leveraging the power of each system’s administrative capabilities. Magento allows Precor to manage all of their products and purchases from one place.
Updates
An integration between Drupal and Salesforce allows the site to funnel commercial leads directly to the relevant salesperson.
On the Drupal side, the marketing team has the power to present their products exactly as they wish, with a range of tools for writing, editing, and publishing content.
The 12 different site instances–each featuring content written in a different language–can now be managed from a central interface.
Continuous Updates
During our initial engagement, we built a strong relationship with Precor and were happy to stay on retainer as their external development partner. Over the next three years, the marketing team drew up quarterly roadmaps, and our developers released a new site or feature nearly every month. Through our collaboration, we were able to help them make many of their digital marketing dreams a reality.
