PostNord creates a customer-centric experience and increases website uptime with Optimizely

In June 2009, Danish Post Danmark A/S and Swedish Posten AB merged to form PostNord AB, a postal services provider operating primarily in the Nordic region.

Despite the relatively recent merger, PostNord’s history dates to the 17th century. From letters to packages, PostNord delivers items in all sizes to, from and within the Nordic countries.Its customer groups range from individuals to small, medium, and large enterprises, stamp resellers to PostNord agents.

Although mail services are declining globally, PostNord remains integral in moving the Nordic society forward. Festive seasons are the busiest times of the year for PostNord. Not only is there a spike in package delivery, but PostNord also experiences an increase in demand and site traffic from customers tracking parcels and purchasing its world-renowned stamps.

PostNord had been experiencing issues with its online shop built on a legacy system of 20 odd years. PostNord’s various websites were constantly down from DDoS attacks prior to moving to Optimizely while customer expectations were also changing.

Due to the way PostNord’s sites were hosted previously, DDoS attacks on one could affect all its sites, causing downtime across.When PostNord’s sites face downtime, customer service receives a spike in calls from dissatisfied users. Despite mail services declining globally, PostNord’s users are still heavily reliant on functions including track-and-trace, parcel pricing, and timeline estimations.

James Robinson, Product Owner at PostNord, shared that the shop was also not responsive and becoming increasingly harder to maintain.

Robinson also shared that improvement efforts were hampered by siloed internal teams that did not have visibility across different functions. The PostNord team knew that starting on a clean slate would give PostNord the best chance at catching up to its technical debt.

PostNord identified Epinova as its Optimizely implementation partner in October 2020. After a thorough analysis of PostNord, Epinova recommended Optimizely Commerce for PostNord’s situation. The PostNord team agreed as Optimizely is a renowned platform amongst developers, ensuring longevity in its marketing tech stack.

Epinova wasted no time helping PostNord migrate to Optimizely Content Management System (CMS) and later, with PostNord’s migration to Optimizely Customized Commerce.

Secure sites helped PostNord tackle downtime issues and DDoS attacks, making its sites always on for users.

The PostNord team finds the suspicious traffic alerts from Optimizely highly valuable as it acts as the first line of defense in maintaining a secure browsing experience for PostNord users.

Moving to a CMS hosted on Microsoft Azure’s cloud computing platform has also changed the way that PostNord work internally. Previously, PostNord’s large cross-functional teams found it difficult to resolve issues quickly both whilst working with an on-premises solution and with its previous cloud platform provider.

Now, with the Optimizely’s cloud-based solution integrated with PostNord’s tech stack and digital services supported by Amazon Web Services, PostNord have a clear deployment pipeline from development all the way to production, allowing them to deploy changes and updates faster than previously possible.

With Optimizely CMS, PostNord uses Recommendations and Targeting to create visitor groups, delivering the most relevant experiences to its widely different customers. The PostNord team complements this with personalized landing pages using Optimizely’s intuitive Authoring & Layout.

This resulted in PostNord providing a more customer-centric experience based on a user’s profile, something it could not execute before Optimizely. From one URL, PostNord can customize its landing page and account login page for the optimum buying experience.

To cater to its plethora of customers from different countries, PostNord leverage Optimizely to make its websites available in various languages including Danish, English, Finnish, German, Norwegian and Swedish.

Regarding PostNord and Epinova’s partnership, Robinson shared that Epinova’s scalable team has been critical in helping PostNord manage the backlog.

When an unexpected request is included in the pipeline, Epinova always comes through in the clutch to ensure timelines are on track.

PostNord’s digital transformation was guided by one goal – to improve site uptime exponentially.

With Optimizely’s cloud hosting on Microsoft Azure, PostNord’s users can track their parcels from a secure site anytime, anywhere. This has increased customer satisfaction and decreased customer service calls, as 90% of PostNord’s site traffic is related to parcel tracking activities.

The PostNord team successfully freed up internal resources dedicated to handle DDoS attacks, saving costs and time.This has improved the work efficiency for PostNord developers.

One of PostNord’s most notable wins was its stamp shop relaunch on Optimizely Customized Commerce in October 2022, where the company received and handled 10,000 items ordered on the first day.  

Robinson shared that PostNord is looking towards experimentation in its continuous efforts to improve customer experience and lead generation.

Ideally, PostNord hopes to encourage private customers to purchase directly from its shop. The team hopes to leverage more digital touchpoints to convert these customers and improve top-of-mind recall.