The combination of commercial thinking and technical depth in the same team is what stands out.
Client Overview
Al-Ittihad Club Company is a Saudi Closed Joint Stock Company representing one of the most decorated and historically significant institutions in Middle Eastern sports. Backed by a massive fanbase and a rich heritage, the club operates an online flagship storefront on Shopify to deliver official merchandise and gear directly to its global community of supporters.
Challenges
Prior to the partnership, the digital storefront suffered from critical operational bottlenecks. The platform experienced a low e-commerce conversion rate of 1.05%, heavily impacted by a 76% homepage bounce rate and a steep 75% checkout drop-off rate. These friction points were primarily driven by language translation and localization errors, misconfigured regional market settings within Shopify Markets, and a disruptive lack of integrated local payment gateways such as Mada and Apple Pay.
Phases
- Phase 1: Discovery & Validation – Comprehensive analysis of user behavior utilizing Microsoft Clarity to pinpoint precise UI/UX friction zones, alongside an audit of misconfigured regional profiles.
- Phase 2: Theme Development – Engineering a dedicated, mobile-first Shopify theme built on an isolated development environment to eliminate live storefront disruption.
- Phase 3: Checkout Integration & Optimization – Rectifying localization issues, establishing Right-to-Left (RTL) language protocols, and deploying native Saudi payment gateways.
- Phase 4: QA Testing – Executing cross-device functional validation checklists to guarantee an enterprise-grade customer experience.
- Phase 5: Growth Retainer Transition – Evolving the relationship into a long-term commercial partnership to oversee continuous iterative growth.
Functionalities Implemented
- Custom, mobile-first eCommerce Today built Shopify theme.
- Advanced Right-to-Left (RTL) localization and Arabic language sync.
- Integrated native payment gateways.
- Microsoft Clarity behavioral analytics integration.
- Strategic urgency features including dynamic header countdown timers.
- Shopify Knowledgebase Application for optimized AI search discovery.
Conclusion
By eliminating friction points throughout the checkout funnel and stabilizing storefront usability, the collaboration successfully built commercial trust with the club’s digital audience. The initial project’s success successfully secured a 12-month Growth Retainer, cementing a long-term strategic partnership to scale Al-Ittihad’s digital commerce strategy ahead of its landmark 2027 Centenary.
TESTIMONIAL
"The combination of commercial thinking and technical depth in the same team is what stands out. Most agencies split those two — you get either a strategist who can’t get into the weeds, or a developer who needs to be told what to fix. eCommerce Today does both. What made that tangible early on was the audit approach. Rather than delivering a long list of generic CRO recommendations, they combined Clarity behavioral data with their own technical review to produce a prioritized tracker with estimated hours and revenue impact tied to each item. That gave us a clear picture of exactly where retainer hours were going and why. The other thing worth calling out is the proactive communication. They flagged the copycat storefront impersonating our brand before we even knew it existed. They surfaced a review backlog as an untapped conversion opportunity without being asked. These are the kinds of observations that only come from a team that’s genuinely paying attention to your business, not just ticking off tasks. For a brand like Al-Ittihad Club, where the store sits at the intersection of fan experience and commercial revenue, that level of ownership from an external partner is not easy to find.”