WordPress development

Turning an Elvis Tribute Site Into a Shop When the Tour Was Cancelled

An ecommerce rebuild for an Elvis tribute artist, turning the site into a shop when the tour was cancelled.

Client
Gordon Hendricks
Industry
Music and entertainment
Timeframe
2020
Project
Visit site
Turning an Elvis Tribute Site Into a Shop When the Tour Was Cancelled website on desktop

When the tour was cancelled in 2020, Gordon Hendricks needed a new way to reach fans and sell music. The existing site listed news and tour dates but had no way to sell CDs or downloads.

The brief was to turn the site into an ecommerce store, support ongoing content alongside Facebook live performances, and grow reach to new and existing fans.

Key results

  • +82.44%

    Session growth YoY

  • +62.69%

    New users YoY

  • 57%

    Email open rate

The brief

The tour was the main source of income for Gordon and his team. With live performances cancelled, the site needed to become a shop: CDs and downloads for fans, secure payments, and postage for UK and international orders.

  • Add ecommerce for CDs and downloads
  • Secure payments and SSL for customer confidence
  • Postage for UK, Australia and Canada
  • Content strategy to support Facebook live performances

The challenge

The tour was cancelled in 2020. That meant no main income stream for Gordon and the team. The existing site listed news and tour dates but had no way to sell CDs or downloads. Fans had no clear path to buy music online.

The site needed to become a shop quickly: products, secure checkout, and postage for UK and international orders (including Australia and Canada).

The approach

The existing WordPress theme was out of date, hard to update and not built for ecommerce. Plugins added bloat without benefit. Shared hosting would not handle order volume and visitor spikes when new albums dropped. The site was rebuilt from the ground up.

Framework: Beaver Builder was chosen for the rebuild. A familiar page builder, it allowed easier content management and faster development. The management team could make changes without technical support.

Ecommerce: WooCommerce was added for the shop. SSL was installed so customers could pay securely. Stripe and PayPal gave fans flexible payment options.

Postage: A plugin was set up to calculate postage for UK, Australia and Canada, and to generate packing slips and postage labels from orders. No manual creation for each sale.

The outcome

The site went live with ecommerce at the end of May 2020. The first weekend turned over a substantial amount in sales.

Sessions grew +82.44% year on year, and new users by +62.69%. Email campaigns performed well: 57% open rate and 11.8% click rate on average.

The site now supports CD and download sales, content updates and marketing to fans. When the tour was cancelled, the shop became the primary revenue stream.

Why it worked

The rebuild focused on clarity: a shop that worked, secure payments, and postage that scaled. Beaver Builder and WooCommerce gave the team a structure they could maintain.

The timing mattered. The shop launched when fans had no other way to buy. The combination of a clear offer, secure checkout and international postage turned the site into a reliable income stream.

Excellent efficient service. Expanded on my requirements and produced quick and efficient graphics which had great images and results via social media.

— Alan Clayton, Manager, Gordon Hendricks as Elvis Tribute Artist

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