Interview with the owner of Ksporting s.r.o. Mr. Kozlík about his sports e-shop, marketing functions and his vision in business.

Mr. Kozlík, you decided to build your fairly large website on WordPress. Why did you decide to do so?

We had the previous e-shop built on the Joomla system (which is also Open Source) and everything worked quite well for us. Nevertheless, we still consulted another possible move at our company and decided to change and switch to the new Open Source platform. So we contacted several companies that would be able to build a similar e-shop on WordPress. Despite the initial offers, which were financially unacceptable for us, we did not give up and addressed you as well. This decision, such as investing in an e-shop, is very important and it was necessary to think carefully. We therefore checked David from the available sources – we read his blog, opinions and CV, and after the first interview, my colleague and I agreed that he could handle all our requests.

How big is your e-shop and what do you do in business?

We are still working on further expansion and therefore the e-shop is already quite extensive. It currently has about 80 thousand. products with variants and more than 1 mil. pictures. The entire e-shop is connected to the Pohoda system, from which the set regular synchronizations take place. We also launched some marketing functions that are interesting and that we did not have on the previous e-shop. Since 1996, we sold branded sports shoes, clothing and accessories, and in order to remain competitive, it was necessary to move our store from brick-and-mortar stores to online sales in the e-shop www.ksporting.cz, which is now our main activity.

Do you feel that some of the marketing functions we have recommended to you increase your turnover?

It is still early for some crucial evaluation, but I certainly already perceive that the deployment of new marketing functions should have a positive effect not only on the increasing turnover of the e-shop. E.g. David recently sent us statistics about an abandoned cart, which pleasantly surprised us. That is why we are currently working on expanding the distribution to 2x instead of 1x for this function. We are also fine-tuning the product evaluation feature, which we expect should increase our SEO. We have already managed to get the e-shop higher in the search engines, which also significantly helps us to the planned goals. Another advantage is that the e-shop is definitely clearer. Nevertheless, if it is planned to get to the next higher numbers, then without marketing and support it is certainly not possible, which every marketer must be aware of today. Even for these reasons, it is necessary to constantly prepare other functionalities and promote other new events.

Do you feel there is an advantage in the Elementor system, which is a drag and drop system?

Yes, I see a big advantage in that. After launching the e-shop, after about a month we evaluated that the original homepage design was not completely ideal, so we had the graphic designer redesign it completely and then had it modified in Elementor only at minimal cost. This system definitely seems ideal to us. We can easily change the design from the front of the site, we can react to current market changes at any time and make a design change according to our needs at any time. Which, even from a financial point of view, is currently a great advantage for us, when it is not necessary to enter and solve these adjustments, which would cost us several times higher amounts elsewhere.

So what do you think about never having to change that site again, thanks to regular updates?

Well, that’s another thing that every entrepreneur cares about. Everyone would like to have a system in which they do not have to put a lot of money a month and at the same time a huge e-shop worked properly for him and could further develop it. I was also contacted by various developers and wanted to program the website from the beginning. But I already know that this is not an ideal solution, because the code becomes obsolete and switching from one PHP to a higher version can be a matter of additional high costs. And that’s one of the other reasons I like WordPress. In addition, I believe that David and his team will never have to change the e-shop again.

Sometimes clients come to us and are afraid of security, how come you never asked?

So I had the previous system on Joomla, which is also Open Source. Security certainly occurred to me, but after the initial meeting with David, I became convinced that this area in terms of security will be sufficiently ensured for you.

Mr. Kozlík, were there any problems in the process?

I think that there will always be some complications every time I start such a big project. We also solved some functionalities, which we tuned for a longer time than we originally planned. Also, at the beginning after the launch, everything was definitely not ideal, but through mutual communication I was convinced that all the requirements can be solved and that we can handle it all together, which is what happened.

What do you plan to do with your business?

We are now working on new warehouses that would help us to the planned further growth, because the existing ones are already very limiting for us. We also try to get other reliable and purposeful employees to join the team for some job positions, which is also not easy today.

Is there anything that will help you grow your business faster?

Our aim is to increase turnover without the need to increase costs, which is certainly the goal of any prosperous company. That is why we have decided to move the e-shop to a new platform and I am glad that we will be able to fully automate some well-established procedures, over which we spend a lot of time, so that we can devote the saved time more efficiently. We are convinced that with the transition to WordPress and working together, we will be able to meet most of the goals of our plans.

Are there any other services you use from Apertia?

Yes, because we have over 200 thousand in our database. e-mail addresses, so we are now testing and testing the Mailuju.cz system. At the moment, however, I do not want to talk about it and evaluate it anymore, because we are just getting to know everything and still comparing it with the previous system, which we still use for sending newsletters. I’m very careful about this, and it takes a while for a system to gain my trust. That’s why we are testing and evaluating everything after some time.

The interview is conducted under the brand WPDistro.cz, which forms the TOP solution on WordPress.