PETstock

Defining a vision for product and partnership.

A mix of project methodologies and partnership theory formed the basis for what would become a strong working partnership with PETstock, and their third-party vendors.

With ambitious online growth targets and industry competition heating up, strategic direction was needed to ensure any new digital experience met complex consumer needs and rapidly evolving shopping behaviour. A comprehensive strategic discovery was undertaken, incorporating extensive stakeholder engagement workshops, qualitative and quantitative customer research, in-store observations, and usability studies. The feature recommendations, audience segmentation, personas, and user journeys formed the basis for all decision-making moving forward.

The project’s scale, along with the complexity to redesign PETstock's omni-channel eCommerce landscape, required a project plan fit for a multi-disciplinary team of developers, project managers, UX designers and digital strategists. A hybrid approach of agile / waterfall ways of working saw increment feature solutioning, developing an ever-evolving system ecosystem, fully realised for launch.

Operating as a single team, PETstock and WeAreDigital successfully deployed the platform. Over a three month period post launch the PETstock team were upskilled on Shopify allowing the internal team to manage the day-to-day codebase deployments.

A shared ecosystem for multiple brands.

PETstock faced a gruelling challenge to preserve the integrity of its suite of branded web properties. The previous existing bespoke eCommerce ecosystem was not fit for scale, nor capable of meeting the complex integration, deployment, and maintenance needs that come with operating one of Australia's most successful pet food and pet service companies.

WeAreDigital were tasked with developing a solution that would allow PETstock to seamlessly enhance their suite of branded web properties at scale, speed, and with ease.

PETstock and their cohort of branded web properties now operate on one of Australia’s most advanced shopping ecosystems. Built on a shared codebase, from a single reusable web theme.

The PETstock team can now release feature expansions across all web properties at scale while significantly lowering the time it takes to roll out major code enhancements and testing requirements.

Delivering a unified and seamless cohort of expanding web properties meant the creation of universal middleware. The solution powers PETstock's omni-channel loyalty reward programs, as well as AutoShip (product subscription), same-day, and click-and-collect delivery across 174 stores. Available across all their brands, all drawing from the company's single ERP system.

Shoppers who visit any of the PETstock branded web properties enjoy world-class shopping experiences; the PETstock development and sales team are now working from an environment conducive to clean, rapid deployments and merchandise enhancements, key to delivering a compelling, competitive marketplace.

Custom omni-channel feature set.

Advanced middleware / omni-channel delivery.

Creating a delivery experience to cater for PETstock’s varying brick-and-mortar and online sale requirements has long been the vision at PETstock. WeAreDigital developed a series of integration enhancements, paving the way for an enterprise-level commerce experience.

Click-and-collect and same-day delivery options.

Partnering with Doordash, WeAreDigital scoped the user experience and integration flows required to develop a custom interaction between Doordash, Shopify Plus and Pronto ERP. Achieving a real-time Doordash integration enabled a comprehensive 136 store same-day delivery service and a 174 store click-and-collect service Australia-wide. The speed of connection between Shopify Plus, DoorDash and Pronto ERP allowed a 15-minute turnaround from purchase to pick-up across all stores. This was powered by bespoke middleware at the heart of everything, built by WeAreDigital. Allowing fast inventory lookups, bookings, and orders by way of syncing Shopify Plus and Pronto ERP at rapid speed.

As a result, PETstock’s same-day delivery, as well as their click-and-collect shipping service, delivers a reliable shopping experience at speed across 174 stores Australia-wide.

Sophisticated AutoShip experience.

Acknowledging AutoShip's substantial monthly revenue potential to the business, there has long been a need for an AutoShip service to facilitate PETstock's robust subscription service. PETstock needed a solution that would support existing business processes, sophisticated custom discounts, loyalty, logistics and warehouse systems, allowing PETstock to provide the best AutoShip experience.

The solution had to ensure compatibility with a suite of requirements. These included: discounts on first order, discounts on recurring orders - taking into account changing sales and promotional events, and the need for automatic replacement products when SKU's were no longer manufactured. Alongside merchandising rules, the service needed to handle shipping and customer preference changes, such as subscription one-off skipping, subscription updates like changing address, products, and changes in payment methods. Integrating with Braintree tokenization allowed for seamless and secure recurring transactions.

A solution was built to meet all PETstock’s requirements, delivering a comprehensive solution integrated with Shopify, ERP Pronto, and a cloud-native solution built on AWS.

Omni-channel discount and loyalty solution.

The omni-channel discount and loyalty (reward points) program needed to be truly omni-channel. WeAreDigital developed a novel solution allowing members to accrue and spend reward points from the existing in-store program, alongside the appropriate brands online. The PETstock team can now deliver a robust rewards program at scale, with the confidence that the integrity of the rewards and discount program will function at an enterprise level.

Reimagined web and mobile experience.

Defining a ‘true’ experience

WeAreDigital developed an information architecture based on a set of key performance objectives and design principles to support relevant, dynamic upselling, cross-selling, and education, as well as structuring a website according to user requirements based on UX best practice. The prototype was based on these key objectives and principles and was tested with pet owners to ensure the site structure and features effectively supported key user tasks and journeys.

Bringing the experience to life

UX evaluations identified the headless system architecture needed to unlock content management and design opportunities. Contentful's headless CMS afforded this flexibility. A blended Shopify Plus and Contentful solution delivered the PETstock team content management efficiencies and enabled a better quality of design for touch points across the website, including Product Description and Pet Smarts advice articles.

Personalisation and Automation.

Data-driven user experiences.

Initial discovery workshops with PETstock identified key audience segments along with relevant customer journeys to form a performance strategy based on user personalisation.

The collaborative strategy formed the basis for the PETstock Personalisation Program. The program of work sought to increase the relevance of PETstock with various audience segments, or 'use cases'. A personalised user experience would be achieved through the delivery of targeted content based on the proven and relevant needs of each of the use cases. This was in contrast to the past, where a single generic message would be rolled out to all prospective and known audiences.

WeAreDigital utilised behaviour and profile data to build use cases. This segmentation utilised data that identified new and returning customers, lifecycle stages, and users' 'pet type'. The tailored content experiences took the form of product and service recommendations and included data-backed upselling and cross-selling campaigns.

Dynamic Yield (DY) was selected as the personalisation engine, and through partnership, WeAreDigital implemented an enterprise-level integration between Contentful and Shopify. The three platforms each brought their strengths to the solution, and together, enabled a best-in-class personalised experience for PETstock customers and prospects - delivered on the website and in email.

The programs' rollout schedule aimed to immediately improve customer experience and increase revenue. High-impact experiments ran in the first month of website deployment. Logged segment behaviours were reevaluated monthly against new experiences uncovered as part of the ongoing optimisation.

The program result was a first-class personalised customer experience that increased engagement and conversions and drove loyalty.

A competitive edge with automation at scale.

Each audience use case was assigned goals for uplift in conversions and revenue. This distinction acknowledged the difference in user needs and their various stages in the marketing funnel. Roadmapping, and a phased deployment approach, was decided by an impact-effort evaluation.

The completed strategy for automated customer journeys covered audience and content definitions - based on relevant inclusions and exclusions for each, rules and data requirements, and schedules.

A personalisation solution was developed to support PETstock's CX experience-led requirements. Dynamic Yield (DY) was selected, and in partnership, WeAreDigital implemented an enterprise level integration with Contentful and Shopify.

WeAreDigital delivered an automation strategy, platform integration, tactical flows and template designs, all serving as the basis for the PETstock Automation Program. Based on behavioural and lifecycle stages and utilising personalised and segmented communications, automation is allowing PETstock to deliver a focused flow of communications, aligned to improve conversions, lifetime value, and brand loyalty.

Dynamic email and website content component blocks serve audiences with 10-15 variations of customer journey flows. The automated journeys are activated at various stages in the customer lifecycle. Component blocks follow best-practice guidelines for content and platform use. Around 20 purpose-driven content blocks were developed by WeAreDigital, each reusable by PETstock for future content strategy.

Executing a best-in-class, automated personalisation platform has improved relevance and elevated user experience for PETstock's customers, increasing conversions, lifetime value, and brand loyalty.