Download Youth Ministry (DYM) is an online education website for youth pastors. Primarily, DYM provides fun and educational content for youth ministry services. DYM had been offering their users a membership program since 2013. Upon joining, members receive monthly store credit, exclusive content and other perks.
While the membership program, based on Magento’s Recurring Profiles, was working well, DYM wanted to scale their online business. The needed help implementing a tiered membership program that controls access to a DYM Games app. The new membership tier would give their loyal customers more value (DYM Games app) very easily.
The Main Problem:
Although they had the idea and the developers to create the game, they needed help properly integrating Magento with a third party custom application’s access control layer. The game app needed to allow subscribing members access while denying access to members that did not subscribe to the new membership tier. Improper implementation of this feature could lead to lost revenue and unhappy members.
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DYM’s goal was to provide users with a three-tiered membership system — bronze, standard, and gold — with each tier offering different features and resources. With this new system, the DYM Games app would be available as an add-on or as part of these membership packages.
EYEMAGINE integrated the game app’s access control layer with the existing Magento platform, extending the Magento API and extending Magento’s Recurring Profiles to:
The software development represents a very complex piece of innovation. Why? Magento does not natively support this kind of tiered membership system. The custom Magento code was designed, planned, and executed with flawless precision. Prior customizations include Authorize.net, reward points, recurring profiles and the Magento API.
Integration at this level is very precise, requiring attention to detail, a thorough understanding of Magento and strict adherence to Magento’s coding standards. This is where many eCommerce retailers commonly run into problems. Less experienced developers often try to create these integrations in multiple stages or without Magento Certified developers. This can lead to big issues like:
When these issues arise, traffic can decrease, revenue can drop, and redevelopment may be necessary.
With a team of Magento Certified Developers, EYEMAGINE was able to avoid these pitfalls and create an effective, high-performing solution.
Ultimately, DYM had an extremely successful launch. Just one week after they presented these updates at a conference, they got a 71% increase in memberships over the previous month.