We are thrilled to be part of this fast-moving bank’s plans to further deliver on its digital first strategy.
We will be mobilising our team to become immersed in the KBC customer journey, the why’s and how’s of their financial needs, in order to create a new experience that makes it easier for them to bank with KBC.
We have been working with KBC for a number of years on CSR initiatives such as KBC Bright Ideas, where we delivered a platform to help them support communities across Ireland with funding for local initiatives.
For the KBC.ie project, we’ll be working on discovery, UX, UI and development phases to launch a new experience in 2020.
We were commissioned by the Carlyle Group to help them create a digital presence to launch their new Student Living property in the heart of the Liberties. The Carlyle Group manage $217 billion in assets globally and this was an important project for them in the Irish market.
Heyday is located on Carman’s Hall and is only a short walk from most colleges in Dublin. We were asked to take their brand identity and bring it to life through a digital design system which could be used across their website, booking engine, social and advertising.
Cormac MacGowan Head of OperationsSimplicity is the holy grail of business – and it takes a sophisticated and special team to recurrently produce simplicity. With WONDR – there is no overpromising and under-delivering. There is no silly pricing – neither excessive nor low-balled. Instead, there is a fair price for excellent work. If I were asked to capture WONDR in a few words, I’d say simple, elegant, excellence in their field.
Heyday - Carlyle Group
Cormac added…
I’ve worked with multiple web-based businesses over the last twenty years, from banks to property websites, and from game development to national sports teams. I’ve worked with lots of different design agencies.
I have never worked with people like the team at WONDR. The team understand business, they understand customers and the interplay between them. This is the secret sauce to business excellence on the web – and I would not hesitate to recommend the team to anyone.
Simply put – they walk the talk.
They welcome you home. They purr, they bark, they chirp. Some of them get you up for a brisk walk on a crisp Winter morning when all you want to do is stay under the duvet. They’re dependent on you when they’re sick and hungry.
All across the globe, pets are cherished companions and owners do what they can to Love Them Well. This is the insight that helped us make the online pet medicine retailer, Pet Drugs Online the best performing Magento eCommerce site in the world.
Although the business was performing well as an eCommerce platform, the real challenge was to stand out in the market and build trust with new consumers. We partnered with the client team to define their digital brand & user experience design in order to build trust, make the purchase of pet medicine easier with overall goal of increasing the online revenue.
For WONDR, delivering results for eCommerce clients is all that matters.
Just a year and a half later Pet Drugs Online have seen significant revenue uplift from investment in the UK, ahead of a European roll out plan.
YoY growth in 2019
Estimated YOY growth 2020
UK Pet Healthcare brand
Neil Fitzpatrick Pet Drugs OnlineWe went from 3rd biggest Pet Health Care brand in the UK to number 1 in 18 months. The work we did with WONDR rolled out across every channel. The brand message is clear. We are the brand that allows you to love your pet better.
Managing Director
Defining business goals
For WONDR it started with in depth discovery sessions to understand the business, its systems & people, listening to all staff members and compiling a coherent plan to set the project in motion.
Just simply having functional digital transactions is not enough anymore, building brand trust and an emotional experience is critical as it has always been for brands, just the technology has changed.
Working with a progressive minded culture that Neil has built in PetDrugsOnline gave us the opportunity to demonstrate that setting your digital brand right is just as important as getting your UX journeys nailed. We know how to help brands deliver great customer experiences that make significant uplift to brands online revenue.
Setting the brand
As part of the process we helped define the brand positioning of ‘Love Them Well’ and created the brand system for all digital channels. This included brand mark refinement, typography, UI styling, photography guidance, patterns, eCommerce component styling, as well as a complete set of social and video templates. This set in place a simple set of guidelines for the in house creative team to implement.
Dermot O’Shea WONDRBuilding brand trust and an emotional experience is critical as it has always been for brands, just the technology has changed.
Digital Architect
Building a richer user experience
We researched this brand and user experience extensively to get a solid understanding of what the opportunities were there to deliver better customer experiences and increase revenue.
Dermot explains, “The brand had a reasonably good conversion rate, however it was clear from research that the PDP and checkout pages needed particular attention. We had to make the process of uploading prescriptions easier and remind people that this is all for the love of their pet, so finish the journey.
We carried out extensive user research which included GA analysis, user video analysis, stakeholder interviews as well as one to one sessions with customers to establish what works best for the them.
We prototyped fast, tested with the call centre staff & real customers as we went to refine and adapt the user experience. This was invaluable as it allowed us to make modifications to help us refine the checkout in particular. The financial success today as a result of this, speak for themselves.
Oisin Hurst WONDRDon’t be frightened. Don’t skimp on the user research as part of your budget. Listen to your customers, it will pay to do so!
Digital Architect
Putting design into motion
Oisin Hurst, WONDR Creative Director says, ‘After we set the brand we created a cloud based tool kit which allowed all of the integration team and 3rd party tools to access one central library to get all the brand assets and styles. This made iterating new features and rollout of front end much faster than traditional methods.’
Setting emotion on the website was important and we did this through video, imagery, typography, copywriting and colour palette to communicate the brand proposition.
The prescriptions journey was designed to be effortless, leading with in site search to help customers find what they needed faster. To create a richer, topical and genuinely useful experience we created an advice centre for users to discover pet-care tips and related, relevant products.
Video content is critical for mobile and we build a system to allow the brand to launch the platform and refine core propositions, guided by three pillars, Trust, Convenience and Value.
Neil Fitzpatrick Pet Drugs OnlineIn an already crowded market, we are the only brand in the UK growing at that rate and that shows just how on the money the overall brand revision was.
Managing Director
A partnership for success
Partnering with clients for product management can’t be underestimated. We helped the team to brief, document and liaise with the chosen integration partner.
Understanding the development process, we assisted the Product Owner in Pet Drugs Online, pushing as much functionality into the first release as possible and worked closely with the team using Confluence to set the project and manage its delivery.
Creating a lasting bond
The brand invests heavily in PPC and SEO but to complete the journey we needed to build audience engagement and real connection. In a move away from generic posting we devised a campaign that would build trust and emotional connection. Brought to life through some simple social video advertising that struck a cord with pet owners.
Here at WONDR, we’re excited to reveal that we had the exciting job of setting the brand narrative for the CSS Design Award’s Website of the Year 2018 showcase website.
We’re so proud to be flying the flag for Irish design 🇮🇪 at on a global stage. The site is an immersive underwater world titled “Coral” — a metaphor for the sea of creativity and design unearthed by CSS Design Awards.
We caught up with two of the WONDR team responsible for bringing this landscape to life. Meet Creative Director, Oisín Hurst and Creative Front End Developer, Clément Grellier. They chatted about the highs, the lows and all the jellyfish in between.
What was it like to be involved in creating Website of the Year Awards site?
Oisín Hurst: Exciting and intimidating.
Clément Grellier: Yes, it was great to work on something focussed on collaboration with freedom of creativity. Of course there’s a big responsibility and expectations at are an all time high — it’s being seen by the entire design community! But that’s an incentive to make sure the work was unique and interesting.
What makes the CSS Design Awards so special?
OH: For me, their mantra of ‘Inspire and be inspired’. The highest thing you can do as a creative is inspire others. If you have work commended on CSS Design Awards you have a platform to potentially inspire someone else. That cycle of creativity can start again. It’s a great social goal.
Why, in your opinion, are the CSS Design Awards important to creatives in the industry?
OH: To me it’s the peer review that adds value. With the CSS Design Awards you genuinely rate the judges — it gives huge weight to the awards. It’s not someone from outside of your field judging design.
I also have a huge admiration for the effort that goes into judging and maintaining the site, and the depth of the view, you can really lose yourself in it. There’s lots of great work to discover.
CG: Yes, for me the wider community aspect as well as the peer review of the rewards.
What inspired the brand narrative “Coral”, our world under the sea?
OH: We wanted to create a narrative that tied in with the proposition and positioning of the CSS Design Awards brand and translate that into a visual concept and a wider digital experience.
Oisín Hurst WONDRTwo aspects stood out to us; firstly the sense of community at the heart of CSS Design Awards, and two, the cyclical journey of inspiration.
Creative Director
It was a metaphor that encompassed thriving creativity and crucially, the idea of community. The notion that we are floating through a vast sea of noise and debris on the internet but when you discover CSS Design Awards you land on a vibrant creative community. It’s our own creative island to be inhabited, much like a thriving coral beneath the sea.
Can you tell us how “Coral” was brought to life?
OH: The coral is a neon island of creativity, floating in a vast digital environment. We created the 3D hero coral by dressing it with neon plant life and lighting it with hues of pink and cyan. We also created a range of secondary corals that included the trophy, crystals and our jellyfish (named Squee).
There’s also a little surprise when you reach the footer. When a visitor scrolls down to the base of each page, they break the water’s surface and discover that the entire experience is actually upside-down.
You explored a few themes before you got to “Under The Sea”, what ideas were killed during the process?
OH: We explored a few different avenues.We wanted a world that had enough variety to create a convincing environment. Our initial idea was a typographic route that encompassed a complete alphabet with seven versions of each letter. But in the end, we decided the typographic route was a little too cold and clinical. It felt natural to come back to the coral which was a richer interpretation of community. That notion was core of the brief.
Oisin, typography still features heavily, how did that evolve?
OH: We took some of the typographic learnings from our initial creative research into the final typography for the site. We agonised over getting movement lifelike and in the end we decided it didn’t have to be literal, as long as the underwater feeling was achieved.
That movement is integral to the theme, can you talk us through that, Clément?
CG: I tried to recreate some of the ideas Oisín had around typography by taking 2D assets and making them look 3D to give them depth. We were keen that the letters would move with the mouse to mimic the underwater feeling of floating, in order to match the coral world.
Clément WONDRHarmonising the movements with the under the sea concept so it was believable was important to the concept. It also kept it natural looking, interesting and interactive.
Front End Developer
The 3D coral is a hero element, can you tell us about the making of it?
CG: An element of play was really important which is why the 3D effect is key. Again we wanted to mimic the underwater feel and make it look more dynamic and interesting for the user.
OH: Yes it was key to bring that habitat to live with 3D. At first we made rotating 3D animations for every asset. We had a master coral with about 5 different coral “children” not forgetting, Squee, our jellyfish. We even created a coral version of the Website of the Year trophy, the CSS Design Awards logo and our own WONDR brandmark that blended nature and technology together.
How was the collaborative process between design and front end development for this project?
OH: It was really open. We didn’t do detailed page designs. It was always more of a conversation on how things could work rather than a prescriptive process. Clément instinctively knew how to elevate the designs I brought to him, creating an immersive experience that surprises the user — giving it the ‘wow factor’ I suppose.
CG: Yes, it was always a work in progress — we just kept bouncing ideas off each other. I think this is the best way to work. It’s how we were able to make the experience a bit more interesting. Open communication meant we stayed on schedule, which is important!
It’s sounds like that dialogue was key to this project?
OH: For me, when I finish something there’s always the temptation to go back and over-work it. It was really important to have the input from the team to know when to stop!
Any challenges you had to overcome once you got into the project?
CG: One of the main challenges was performance because of the amount of data. The weight of data for this project is quite high as we have to parse all the votes, nominees, judges, winners and display them in a dynamic way. It was quite challenging to handle all that data and re-organize it, sort it and filter it.
The other challenge was the assets. As we wanted to make the assets interactive and have them move and rotate, we needed to have a sequence of images for each asset ,like the letters and the coral, which increases the weight of the page. We tested and went back and forth before finding the right way to do that and made sure everything is loaded correctly.
We used very specific properties like masking videos, which made the QA more difficult because some of these properties are not available on all browsers. We often had to code a specific alternative to make sure it displays properly on all modern browsers (although the experience is best viewed on Chrome).
OH: Yes, as you work through it, you think you’ve killed all your darlings at concept stage, but then you realise there’s plenty more to kill. We had particle effects and additional movement that sadly, had to be cut. There comes a time you sacrifice things to the ‘gods of performance’. You have to decide what’s bone and what’s flesh. Protect and what you can, sacrifice what you can’t.
Favourite thing about the Website of the Year website, now it’s complete?
CG: The underwater universe. The creativity of the concept and bringing it to life.
OH: The magical realism of the site. The fact it floats and it feels electronic and magical at the same time.
You’re now well into your fifth year, how did you get started?
Yes time does fly. In 2014 it was a busy year for me both professionally and personally. I had just got married, had a kid, bought a house and I thought to myself you know what I need to do next is set up a company, sure what else would I be doing.
I had built a good reputation and bank of work but I knew the model for the work I wanted to do was changing and I had a clear view on what it would evolve too. I had plenty of good offers abroad and in this market to build what would become WONDR within the comfort of a larger agency environment. I felt it was best to stay at home in Ireland, re-programme my skills, stay independently owned and build something from the ground up that I would be proud of.
I had contacts made from years working in branding, one of them being Oisin Hurst (now our Creative Director). We worked on the GAA rebrand together and he was keen to introduce myself to a company called PCH who’s branding he was working on. They needed a strong digital partner to help them transform their digital presence to bring their new positioning to life.
This was a very interesting project and it gave me the confidence to get the business started. This became WONDR’s first client and was a major part of the initial story that helped the company to get started. I’m still very thankful to Philip Dwyer & the PCH leadership team for putting trust in myself to work with them as they were working with Fantasy Interactive at the time and it was a good endorsement to land this project.
Do you think the digital industry has changed since you’ve started?
Yes it has evolved massively, just look at any project you’ve done that is over 2 years old and you can see how fast things can date if they’re not constantly polished and optimised. We’re still in the early days of digital, so if people think digital is fast and complicated now, wait till they see what’s coming next.
I could go on about the role of data and user research, but most people by now know this is the future already but yet struggle to apply it to their day to day. If people just started with this they’d see huge improvement in their digital brand experiences.
One other area I’ve noted is how the relationships we have with client partners is evolving. We’ve helped client teams to structure and build their teams internally so where possible they don’t need us which is kind of against the typical ‘agency’ model.
We’re always keen to keep tasks in house on the client side where possible by building design systems that work across all applications and encourage clients to keep their budget to work with ourselves on hero roadmap projects instead.
Business growth comes out of brave choices.
Dermot O'Shea FounderYour new positioning talks about clarity + bravery, why?
We like to carry out detailed discovery and definition stages that help to remove the perceived complexity from digital projects. I often tell new clients, we do the thinking up front to de-risk their project and investments as quite often digital change projects can evolve significant capital to make them happen. We’re there to make it a success.
When we looked at our positioning, we interviewed all of our key clients to help us shape and inform our approach. A common theme that kept coming back was the idea of a digital journey which they trusted us to guide them through.
Some were keen to highlight we removed the complexity to help bring them goals, experiences and results that mattered. We also took onboard the feedback that we’re very honest, open and not afraid to give people the advice they need. Anyone who’s worked with us will surely back us up on this point 🙂
We refer to this as being brave to make the right choices for the brand, not what’s right for our revenue or portfolio of work. Quite often digital projects involve cultural and organisational change where you have to make the brave choices up front on things such as brand, resourcing, technology & media to be successful. Business growth comes out of brave choices.
You describe yourselves as a Digital Product Practice. Why?
Ireland and in particular Dublin is changing all the time due to the sheer scale of international tech companies that come here, so we felt that the idea of an agency or studio belongs to the legacy of Advertising.
Their model works for them but not for us. We didn’t want clients to assume we worked to the same methodology or process as we have invested significant time in developing our ways of working.
Alot of our client work is on digital products and we operate an agile kanban methodology so we needed a description that reflected more of what we did day for day for our clients.
Which of your projects to date do you think epitomise clarity + bravery?
We recently partnered with UK brand called Pet Drugs Online. If there was ever a project that needed clarity + bravery then this was it. For us there was huge potential for this brand to disrupt the market and become the ‘boots’ of pet healthcare. We spent a great deal of time bringing clarity to their brand, UX & technology choices.
We were brave with our approach to refresh the brand and re-platform at the same time, the end results has seen a 47% year on year increase in revenue and each month they are breaking new sales records they never saw before.
You’re a company of internationalists, with talent from all over the globe. Is hiring from internationally important?
Yes we have a wide selection of languages and countries represented in the practice. It really helps to keep us open to change and the outside world as our team bring their experience to Ireland from France, Japan, Brazil, Canada, US and a far.
We’re constantly going to international events and awards to help keep touch but also to validate we’re on the right path.
Dermot O'Shea FounderWe aim to be a catalyst that sparks the next generation of digital talent in Ireland
We want to further add to Ireland’s growing reputation as world leaders in design, as we firmly believe the best work can be done from Ireland. It’s why recently we collaborated with CSSDA Website of the Year awards where the world’s best work was selected.
To be involved in this greater story is an honour but also validates WONDR’s reputation amongst our peers as being as good as any other market.
Do you have a vision for WONDR for the next 5 years?
We love eCommerce work in particular so in 5 years time it would be an ambition to be known internationally for our work in this field as I believe we’re already good as any other places doing this. Too many brands are still prisoners and passengers on their technology platforms and it’s our ambition to help people unlock this.
Finally I keep coming back to this idea you have to have pride in what you’re doing or else what’s the point. When I look back in 5 years time, I want to feel proud of the work the team has done. It’s my job to foster the culture to enable this to happen.
The #10YearChallenge has taken the internet by storm, so we’re doing it our way.
Instead of dodgy hairdos and questionable outfit choices, we’re opening the vault to some past work. In 2009, WONDR founder Dermot O’Shea and Creative Director, Oisín Hurst, were key parts of the team that rebranded the GAA.
The GAA was founded in 1884 in an effort to preserve and cultivate our national games. Rebranding was also an exercise in preservation, to establish a brand identity that would meet the changing needs of modern Ireland. Ten years on, their work has remained culturally relevant, whilst retaining the deep heritage and storytelling of the GAA and has become an icon of branding.
The GAA is one of the last remaining true institutions in Ireland, what was it like working on such a behemoth?
Dermot: It was remarkable, everyone in the GAA and everyone on the project team felt the weight of expectation to deliver the right outcome. We were working with a brand with rich heritage, so the story was a special one. GAA has a deep history and is culturally engrained in our country. We all really, really cared as a project team and we all trusted one another to do the right thing.
Dermot O’Shea WONDRWe learned a lot about storytelling as a way to sell in the use of the branding. Talking to people in a real way and not highfalutin marketing speak. That still stands to us today when working with brands and clients.
Founder
What challenges did the GAA face and why did they need to rebrand?
Oisín: With everyone from major commercial sponsors to local level GAA kids’ clubs using different versions of the branding there was ambiguity around the identity. Nowhere was the name ‘GAA’ prominent in any of the old branding and the institution was losing ownership of the Championships to corporate sponsors. They needed something that could be owned by the people — from HQ to grass roots clubs, so anyone involved in the GAA could say, “This is us”. We were really conscious of our responsibility to the GAA and to the local clubs to get this right.
No pressure then…..! How did it feel to be tasked to work on such an iconic brand?
Dermot: I didn’t see it as just a brand identity project. It was about the deep heritage of our nation and telling the story of our people. Something to tell your family about, that will be here long after we’re gone. If you do it wrong you will always be disappointed in yourself. We had a great trusting relationship with the client team which gave us the confidence to succeed.
Oisín: It’s a huge responsibility because if you do it right it will never have to be done again. If you do it badly though — well, that can do a lot of damage. You have commercial responsibility to make sure it works well at sponsorship level but also give back something that people can connect to and take ownership of. Ultimately, we understood the heritage and the place for the GAA and were able to make it work.
It was a huge research project, can you tell us about that?
Dermot: The project spanned three years and we reached out to the whole global GAA community, with over 8,000 people interviewed. From the Taoiseach to the grass cutter. Youth workshops were set up all over the country. Sports stars and GAA legends were also consulted. It was so big, our research made the Six One news. How often does that happen on a normal project?
Oisín: Our audit of the brand evolved into an exhibition which ended up being housed in a dedicated hall in Croke Park. Our visual summary board had every artefact of GAA we could find. It was an array of brands connected to the GAA but not united. From championship to club level everyone had a different approach. We had to unify the brand.
Oisín Hurst WONDRIt’s a huge responsibility because if you do it right it will never have to be done again. If you do it badly though — well that can do a lot of damage.
Creative Director
Can you talk us through the logo and what each part represents?
Oisín: There are two parts, the brandmark and the heritage crest. The primary brandmark is the GAA name, uniquely crafted, drawing cultural resonance from Ireland’s calligraphic past.
Oisín Hurst WONDRThe name was uniquely styled, drawing strength from our ancient heritage while being refined to represent youth and games.
Creative Director
It’s been a busy year for WONDR. We launched some of our most successful projects. We made it our mission to empower clients to set their digital brand story and helped them realise great success to boot. We achieved some big goals in 2018.
We worked on some challenging and exciting projects. Won global awards, made big moves, got fresh meat by way of new team members (shout out to Tash the dog, our new favourite employee who freelances from time to time). So here’s how it all went down.
Winter
We kicked off the year with a Website of The Day award from CSS Design Awards for our work on New Music Dublin. Making us the most awarded Irish practice across CSS Design Awards, FWA and Awwwards.
We made waves with ESB Energy UK working on a successful digital branding project and full site experience, creating motion design that even managed to work it’s way into the TV ad — proof that collaboration between digital and offline creates better experience for brands.
Spring
We welcomed Pierre to the WONDR team, all the way from France he brought enthusiasm, hipster bikes and the most french moustache we’ve ever seen.
Then we got some amazing news — flying the flag for Ireland, we were named in the Top 10 studios in the World by CSS Design Awards. We’re absolutely convinced the best digital work can come out of Ireland, and this year we’ll be looking even more to set the international benchmark for great work.
Summer
In June we moved into our new office space on Wicklow St, right smack bang in the middle of the city. Four floors of creativity and a rooftop with city views (we’re yet to take full advantage of). We quickly became accustomed to bad buskers on Grafton Street, pints in Mary’s bar and the ‘Big Debate’ — which burger is better, WOW burger or Bunsen (the jury is still out).
Autumn
We welcomed our new Director of Operations Emily Miller — fresh off the plane from Canada, she decided poutine and snow is over-rated and there’s no place like home for the craic. She’s brought knowledge, expertise and invaluable insights from markets across the Atlantic.
We launched Pet Drugs Online’s new platform and turned UK’s most popular pet e-commerce platform into the world’s best performing Magento website by the end of 2018 — proof that partnering with clients and listening to what they need is the way forward.
That was just a little glimpse into the world of WONDR over the last 12 months.
Thank you to everyone who partnered with us, inspired us and liked us in 2018, roll on 2019 as we have some big projects and changes happening.
Choosing between what is right and what is easy isn’t always a straightforward choice but it doesn’t have to be an either-or situation.
Catching up with Dermot O’Shea (Founder – WONDR) and Oisin Hurst (Director of Creative Brand Strategy – WONDR) and Sarah Jane Lynch, Head of Digital Innovation at Brown Thomas/Arnotts to discuss how making the right combination of choices led to an agile 25 day User Experience project that resulted in a 100% uplift in mobile revenue for the Irish retailer.
When WONDR first started working with Arnotts over two years ago to help them transform the brand for digital there were some serious decisions to be made. The brand’s overhaul for digital required the launch of an entirely new eCommerce site that would align with the brand’s quality credentials, not to mention demanding customer expectations. But what should be done with the existing site in the meantime, particularly on mobile?
The team at WONDR came up with a plan to both redesign and re-platform the brand while also ensuring key fixes on the existing site would work alongside to significantly boost revenues.
Oisin explains “The initial plan was to look mainly at the new eCommerce website but it became apparent very quickly that there were existing opportunities — ones that would immediately generate more revenue for Arnotts. We looked at it as a win-win — start increasing sales and revenue on the live site, while developing the strategy for the new site in parallel.”
To start, WONDR convinced the Arnotts team that it could apply a “hotfix” approach to optimise the front-end of the platform without having to modify the current platform it was running on. Time is money in retail and this short and medium term approach was essential, especially considering the re-platforming project was due to take several month.
Oisín Hurst WONDRRe-platforming can take a while, but during that time nothing should ever stop for the business. The retailer needs to be able to continue performing user experience changes to keep the business and brand growing
Dermot adds “WONDR already had a very strong working relationship with Arnotts, having worked on a number of projects together — but this time there was the opportunity to tap into a far wider range of techniques and tactics. It was a chance to prove that some of the techniques we planned to deploy in the wider and more ambitious re-platforming project could actually be used right away.
“When you’re working on a project like this it can be very easy to gravitate towards the ‘big ideas” he continues. “Our job was to ensure Arnotts could make the most of the existing platform whilst delivering a mobile and multi-platform brand that would be fit for the future.”
Measuring Impact
WONDR’s brand philosophy is very much in line with delivering results that matter — every idea proposed and decision made by the team was based on doing the best for the customer while also ensuring the brand remains differentiated and distinctive. As a quality retail brand with “experience” as a core principle we needed to deliver on both.”
Sarah Jane Lynch Head of Digital Innovation - ArnottsWe needed to make sure that every piece of work had a clear and demonstrable impact on the bottom line.
She goes on to explain “The team at WONDR spent time analysing site analytics to get a clear picture of what was happening and how to deliver the best site experience and revenue potential. As well as their knowledge of brand building and experience design they really understood that any investment needed to deliver real financial pay-back. Putting strong measurement in place allowed us to measure this against every change made.”
The up-front analysis carried out by the Arnotts and WONDR team clearly helped avoid the costly pitfalls often associated with both hot-fix and major re-platforming projects.
Dermot explains: “Time that you would normally spend in the boardroom coming up with ideas, prepping presentations or polishing minor ideas is better spent working on the actual nuts and bolts of the project itself. It may sound pretty basic, but on projects like this it really is better to sketch out on paper rather than spend valuable time on a Mac polishing detail that may not go anywhere. This project had no time for pontificating or the stroking of crusty beards around a whiteboard — retail moves too fast and is too competitive for that.”
“Once I had a solid system in mind, I quickly moved into prototyping the key journeys that were critical for performance, testing and iterating a real mobile experience.”
“We skipped the usual presentations with exhaustive and quite frankly unnecessary explanations. We were working with a team of “digital doers” — both in WONDR and in Arnotts. It’s amazing what can be achieved by taking a mobile device — the device the customer will actually end up using — and with a savvy, motivated team testing, iterating and implementing quickly.”
A Customer-Centric, Brand-Centric Approach
As soon as ambitious timelines and the right level of investment was agreed the challenge was clearly set. Bridge the gap between the present site and the re-platform and deliver both a long-term and interim customer-centric experience worthy of the Arnotts brand.
Oisin explains the approach. “After we prototyped the ideal mobile experience, we gave our team the painstaking task of redesigning it — significantly, I might add — with CSS and JavaScript amends only,”
We set our best creative developer to lead the team, and his mission was simple: descale as little of the ideal prototype while retaining all mission critical functionality”.
Just improving design and functionality on it’s own though wouldn’t be enough. In the competitive retail category, where many brands are failing to cut-through or disappointing consumers with poor digital experiences, delivering above expectations is no longer a luxury, it’s a necessity.
Dermot adds. “We had to start with a basic mobile iteration of their current platform to allow us to build the brand for the future.
The site couldn’t just be a catalogue of products. It had to be a rewarding retail experience online.”
He continues “Anyone who knows anything about retail store design will tell you, it’s very much about understanding customer psychology. So why wouldn’t the same be true online? The big opportunity for Arnotts was transferring this to the digital shopper journey.
Dermot O'Shea Founder - WONDRWe’re living through a cultural and retail revolution and mobile is at the heart of it. For Arnotts, the opportunities are boundless.
Key psychological truths like ‘choice anxiety,’ ‘future memory’ and ‘personal self-doubt’ are all deeply ingrained in shopping behaviour. These important human factors combined with changes in style and culture were taken into consideration during the design process.
User-design is much more than just keeping things simple. It’s about appealing to users on a deep and emotional level while being differentiated as a brand in the mind of consumers.”
Oisin agrees with this perspective. “Designing for retail in digital is much more than optimising opportunistic online transactions. You have to create a true retail destination. A place that people will want too go to because it inspires them, not just helps them carry out pre-considered tasks. People should want to come back to it naturally, like their favourite news site or social media network. That’s the real retail challenge. Brands like Arnotts see it as an opportunity and are already reaping the rewards.
Selling Success
The approach paid off. The project was delivered on time and on budget with the mobile solution delivering significant and immediate impact on revenue.
“It was agile, innovative, cost-effective and financially measurable,” says Sarah Jane, “It was a positive experience to work on too. A real partnership between the teams.”
Oisin adds, “What we’re most proud of is that we proved that properly engaging with a re-platform project, in increments, not just single goals, can bring significant benefits. Taking on a front-end only project is never the ideal solution. Yet for so many businesses in Ireland they can’t afford not to to this.” he says.
“I’m glad we were able to demonstrate in a very tangible way that investing in the proper design and people-centric experience can bring forth much more returns. You don’t have to wait for the big re-platform project to happen. Losing money on a poor site is more expensive in the interim than breaking hot fixes on an existing platform into smaller work streams to create real results from day one.”
So, if time is money in retail, then waiting for the “big new site reveal” without also making what you have work even harder through solid brand and UX thinking could be costing alot of brands more than they realise.
Dermot concludes “We established WONDR to work with progressive, businesses that want to build their brands around people in a digital world. The Arnotts team understood this from the start and we had the backing of the senior team. This is the sort of partnership that creates great work, in the immediate term as well as the long term and as we’ve seen with this project, great return for the business.”