Turning up eCommerce momentum for the home of entertainment.
Since their first branded store opened on London’s Oxford Street in 1921, HMV has grown to become the UK’s leading music and entertainment retailer. After being acquired by Canadian company Sunrise Records in February 2019, HMV has enjoyed a strong commercial and online revival, marking its 100th anniversary in July 2021.
Having worked as a core partner for over a decade, we’ve seen HMV’s digital presence go from strength to strength. From a standing start, the website made an immediate impact within its first six months and continues to deliver impressive growth today, supported by a flexible, composable architecture that underpins its ongoing success.
Turning up purchasing convenience
Purchasing convenience and necessary consumer “pull” and a desire to “do it my way” has led to a sleeker and more satisfying shopping experience. Fusing online with an in-store experience, customers can now choose from a combination of options including the ability to:
- Buy online and traditional home delivery
- Click and collect in-store
- Shop and pay in-store
- Use the ‘In-store service’ - Pay for non-stocked, and have them shipped directly to a specified location or select an in-store pick-up
Perfectly integrated eCommerce
At the heart of the solution architecture are several third-party integrations including:
- Worldpay - Payment gateway supporting Paypal and Klarna
- PIM - Product feed of over 450K SKUs
- Bloomreach - Intelligent site search with a sophisticated pathways/recommendation engine
- Visualsoft, Scarab, and Google Merchant affiliate feeds
Kentico and extended features
A range of core features form part of the overall solution delivery:
- Coupon redemption
- Pre-orders
- International shipping
- Hubox
- Restricted items (Timed purchase window, or in-store collection only)
- Bundles
- Promotions and discounts including the famous hmv “X for £Y” discounts
- A fulfilment model for partial shipping of orders i.e., Payment and shipping of individual order lines
Scaling to new heights
The Ridgeway managed Azure hosting (App services) solution on the ‘Vinyl campaign weekend’ 2025, seamlessly handled more than ~12,000 concurrent users, demonstrating the site’s in-built auto-scaling ability.
Music to our ears
We continue to support hmv’s digital transformation with SLA Standard Service Support including Premium level and out of hours for peak periods as well as an ongoing roadmap of exciting new features and functions.
hmv’s solution has won several awards, including UK national eCommerce Award for Excellence in the “Best Electronics, Computing, DVD, Film, Games, Music & Toys eCommerce” category, and “Best Ecommerce Site” and “Largest Site of the Year” in the Kentico Site of the Year awards.
The last thing we wanted is to become ‘just another high street retailer’. This is more about offering the ability to buy what the customers were demanding, whilst retaining what has been unique about the experience entertainment fans get from hmv.
