Supporting Growth, Improving Customer Experience, and Increasing Business Agility for The Gym Group

The Gym Group is a low-cost, high-quality health and fitness business with more than 225 no-contract gyms open 24 hours a day. It is the fifth largest gym operator in Europe and has an ambitious expansion strategy for its gym estate to grow to 300 gyms in the UK. 

The Gym Group’s digital estate is integral to its business strategy to connect with customers and drive sales. However, heavily customized code on monolithic applications underpinned by legacy infrastructure made updating or adding new capabilities overly complicated and frustrating for teams at The Gym Group.

Some elements of its digital estate were reaching the end of life, and there were limited options to scale. This meant changes and optimizations had become expensive and didn’t reflect its best-in-breed customer service. It needed a platform that could handle high traffic and transactions at peak times and deliver a streamlined purchasing experience.

In addition, The Gym Group needed to provide a best-in-class digital experience that engages and motivates its members to achieve their health and fitness goals. As the company continues to grow, The Gym Group wants to make it easier for customers to access the information they need and manage their membership, as well as remove any pain points during the joining process and increase conversion rates.

Mobile-first, SEO-optimized transactional eCommerce platform

Ensono worked with multiple stakeholders across The Gym Group to deliver an improved eCommerce platform and create a better digital experience for existing and potential members.

We designed and built an SEO-optimized, user-friendly public-facing sales site and membership area that is robust enough to deliver high performance and a smoother experience during peak traffic.

The new platform was designed with its everyday users in mind, making it easier to navigate around the site and access information relevant to them. Moreover, it enables The Gym Group to focus its resources on improving customer satisfaction and delivering an engaging and competitive offering.

Enhanced member experience

We integrated Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) with a new headless CMS and microservices solution to support new members with a seamless sign-on process and drive conversions.

Single Sign On (SSO) between the legacy site, mobile app, eCommerce site and members area brings a seamless experience for members and secures valuable personal data. Friction was removed from the checkout process, reducing the number of customers that abandoned transactions and increasing conversion.

Supporting agility, expansion and change

The Gym Group needed something not only suitable for its business today, but something that would be suitable for years to come. Deployed in the cloud on Microsoft Azure, the new eCommerce platform provides The Gym Group with the flexibility to roll out platform enhancements that drive improvements, better customer experiences and sales. It also gives The Gym Group confidence that its digital platform can scale to match its long-term expansion plans.

Our collaborative approach has also helped The Gym Group adopt agile practices and respond more quickly to its customers’ changing demands and needs. We provide ongoing management to ensure the platform is always up and running, assuring system availability, reliability and performance.

• Rapid deployment: A faster time to market means The Gym Group can introduce new features in weeks or even days.
• Improved efficiency: Modernized technology and engineering practices improve operational efficiency and future flexibility.
• Scalability: Cloud-based and Software as a Service (SaaS) technology allow The Gym Group to scale for growth.
• Improved conversions: Achieving a 100-150 bps conversion improvement, driven by the new experience and increased stability.