Mastermind is an educational toy chain operating 10 retail outlets in the Toronto area.
The Challenge:
To build an online storefront to compliment their successful bricks and mortar business.
The Strategy:
When mastermindtoys.com was about to launch In 1999 both Amazon.com and E-toys had invested large public capital into building their online toy stores. They were however unable to effectively ship to Canada, and the strength of the US dollar made it difficult for Canadians to buy from American companies. Mastermind saw an opportunity to leverage their state of the art warehouse facility and experience to compete with the larger American competitors in Canada and the United States.
Onroad knew that the e-commerce solution and website itself would have to instil a great deal of consumer confidence if they were to be successful. Working with Mastermind, and guided by Mastermind's desire to simulate the in-store shopping experience, Onroad designed an e-commerce site using such early innovations as the visual shopping cart, which allowed shoppers to see the price and the shipping costs of their intended purchases from anywhere on the site and in real time. Consideration was given to search engine exposure but the primary focus was obtaining prominent incoming links on the manufacturers websites in the "where to buy" sections.
Finally, site architecture was a key consideration, particularly so in the early years, given the need to make sure Mastermind's traditional clientele were able to easily navigate the site.
The Results:
Mastermind was able to effectively jump into the online toy store market by leveraging their existing bricks and mortar infrastructure, and their intimate knowledge of their client base. The visual shopping cart and up-front shipping calculator used on the site were imitated by industry giants within months, and are still used today. Effective incoming link placement has proven to be a successful strategy and recent search engine optimization efforts have made mastermindtoys.com a leading participant in the online specialty toys industry.
As a testament to the quality of the early site architecture, the look and feel of the site has remained consistent since its inception.