Ghirardelli’s eCommerce presence was hindering the brand—a clunky CMS, poor architecture and navigation, outdated design and order fulfillment issues were not only affecting internal teams, but also impacting site visits and sales. Aside from fixing what was broken, the new site needed to serve as a destination to drive branded commerce. From strategy to development Propane delivered on branded commerce from both a front-end (UX, Design, Content Strategy) and back-end (CMS Development, eCommerce Integration) with a perspective that brought to life the Ghirardelli brand like never before, online.
OUR WORK | Websites & Products
Modernizing a Historical Brand’s E-commerce
- Generate Interest
- Ghirardelli
- The Ask
- Creating the best branded e-commerce destination
Generate Interest
Highlights
- Modular design
- Replatforming to Magento from X
- SEO -Content Savvy (see content strategy
- Audience Driven User flows (6x personas)
- Enhanced Digital brand guidelines
- Generate Interest
- Ghirardelli
- The Challenge
- Motivating shoppers through integrated e-commerce
Addressing the needs of consumers first we began by shifting the focus from “determined buyers” or people who arrive at the site willing to buy to instead support the intent of visitors whose primary goals are to discover, learn and gather information around specific topics.
In an effort to encourage discovery we leveraged upscale imagery, white space and dynamic animation to draw visitors in, encourage exploration, all while romancing the chocolate. Rich imagery around parings and recipes seek to further entice, inspire and educate visitors on the Ghirardelli story.
Beyond discovery, a focus on “unintentioned buyers: presented the challenge of motivating visitors to take action over simply browsing. To accomplish this we mapped the path to purchase for the various types of buyers placing a heavy focus on conversion. Shifting the focus to Ghirardelli’s internal team we delivered a completely rearchitected solution that seamlessly integrated with the brand’s order fulfillment system.
The new eCommerce site leveraged Magento as the CMS allowing stakeholders to easily modify and update key pages such as recipes, events, locations and careers. The powerful platform also successfully incorporated several key integrations including, Exact Target (lead gen capture and drip campaign needs), Optimizely (A/B testing integration) and GiveX (gift card fulfillment). The resulting responsive site was not only intuitive and beautifully designed from the front-end, but powerful and fully integrated across the back-end reducing waste and providing valuable insight into business data.
- Generate Interest
- Ghirardelli
- The Results
- Increased E-commerce Insights & Outcomes
We took a historically rich brand and successfully made it relevant in the digital age. A contemporary look and feel and streamlined buying process will carry Ghirardelli forward, while driving sustainable loyalty and advocacy for the brand. Through technical integrations we were also able to deliver more business insight than ever.
As we uncovered the 6 distinct audience buying mindsets we were able to design experience pathways that all lead to higher site convertions.
Neil Chaudhari - CXO, Propane
