A brand new eCommerce website for The Games Bunker

The Process

The website has been constantly evolving since the start of the project in 2019 and has undergone many stages of evolution over the past few years. The initial build was to quickly provide an eCommerce site using Umbraco and Snipcart as a means for selling stock and for listing pre order & special edition items… and most importantly to provide the owner with an income during lockdown.

The second phase was to design and build a booking system so players could book tables to play on with friends and enter tournaments. Using bespoke hand written code alongside the Snipcart checkout service already integrated we were able to achieve a relatively simple booking system which is easy to use and simple to maintain.

The third phase was to create a subscription membership service so that regular players could enjoy easier booking and member specific discounts and premium perks - plus providing the owner with a regular income!

This has quickly moved on to creating an Electronic Point of Sale (ePos) to use as an over the counter stock adjustment into the online inventory. This product was created using Blazor and seamlessly blends with Umbraco back end giving the owner full control over the product inventory.

The Outcomes

The Games Bunker is a small startup business with limited budget but big ideas. With the use of Umbraco we were able to build the website in different stages and add functionality to the website along the way without a massive start budget. By simply splitting a ‘wish list’ into small minimal viable products (MVP’s) meant that we could get the site up and running and come back to other elements as and when the budget allowed.

The owner has regularly maintained high turnover of sales since the launch of the web shop and boasts over 3,000 products. The latest release of Warhammer saw all new release items sell out within half an hour and the website stood up to high demand traffic.

The recent addition of the ePos has removed the dependency on manually adjusting online stock as it is sold over the counter which has increased efficiency of staff time and accuracy in stock levels.

Ongoing Support

The owner is always full of great ideas so we are constantly working together on making their ideas become a reality. It was important that they had full control over the content and could easily add new products, new events, and adjust online stock without relying on us.

The key thing for The Games Bunker is the way we work means as their business grows they are able to reinvest into the website and add further development without heavy outlay at the beginning, plus they are safe in the knowledge we can expand and add to the website without having to rebuild.