Nobia

A disjointed network

Nobia was faced with the challenge of having separate websites for its brands, each developed in-house together with different suppliers and across different platforms. The features differed from site to site, and hosting was managed by a mix of external suppliers.

Nobia wanted to create a future external web platform on Optimizely and find a long-term strategic partner to develop and support it. Following a rigorous procurement process, NetRelations was chosen as partner, and an exciting journey towards a new web platform began in the spring of 2013.

Realising Digital Ambitions

The technical web platform that emerged under the name Hercules is built on Optimizely CMS in combination with peripheral products, services, and integrations. This was valued as the best technical solution again Nobia’s ambitions.

The overall functionality includes:

• Extremely flexible template system using blocks to create dynamic solutions within and between websites
• Booking management for meetings, with links to ERP, CRM, and email systems
• Image gallery based on ImageVault 4 and Episerver Find
• Optimizely Commerce Catalog for orders
• Collaboration workspace between customers and kitchen stores, with unique customer accounts to enable remote planning of their kitchen purchases
• Capability to integrate external CRM systems for tracking prospect activity

When building the Hercules platform, Optimizely Premium Partner NetRelations, focused on maximizing the potential of the blocks method, which offers enormous flexibility for controlling both appearance and logic within and between the various brands’ own websites.

The entire solution demanded the utmost in providing a modern, flexible and accessible user experience that would work seamlessly between different devices. A huge effort in responsive-design has created one of the market’s most effective mobile interfaces.

The solution also needed to consider a global market comprised of different units, languages and behavioral trends.

The entire Group’s digital marketing and web platforms now converge in a single Optimizely enterprise solution, whose configuration and version management are the only elements that differ when delivering the websites for Poggenpohl, HTH or another one of Nobia’s brands.

The spring of 2013 saw the launch of the first website, poggenpohl.com, on the Hercules platform as a proof-of-concept site. In 2014, the first full-scale website was launched based on Hercules, followed by the successful launch of all brand websites throughout 2014-2015. E-commerce functionality was also launched in 2015.

Simplifying the buying process through digital

From dreams of a new kitchen to a long-lasting relationship. Committing to buying a kitchen requires a large purchasing decision from the customer. The main purpose of building the digital was to simplify the customer journey.

To reflect this purpose, each individual brand site was developed to simplify and enhance the customer experience for visitors who had bought or were considering buying a kitchen.

Nobia wanted to mark a clear transition from the static catalog to a powerful lead generation tool. The goal of the new digital solution was to create a central point of control for content production.

The web solution, therefore, uses a service design perspective as its starting point, where each individual feature, content item or service supports one or more elements of the customer journey.

Inspirational content = customer engagement

The goal is to inspire and engage potential customers, drive relevant traffic to the physical stores (from an omnichannel perspective) and simply make it easier to buy a kitchen. So, from the outset, Nobia focused on creating inspirational content, simplifying customer dialogue and creating a higher integration and value add between the digital and the physical customer interaction.

Brand engagement

Engagement begins in a connection outside of a brand’s website with a strong focus on presence and interaction, one that creates digital visibility in channels like social media. There are two ways to Nobia engage with social media; by sharing content from the current website and by getting inspiration from external channels and storing it on the site’s digital collaboration workspace.

KPIs simplify prioritization and development 

When developing the functionality, content, and services for each site and for the platform, NetRelations and Nobia kept a sharp focus on measurement and analysis from day one, using tools like Google Universal Analytics and Tag Manager.

Right from the outset, measurement methods and zero values were established. Since the launch, KPIs have been continuously evaluated and then used to support development priorities as well as enhancements to established functionality.

In addition to the detailed report, the major KPIs are aggregated in a dashboard. This dashboard overview enables the various stakeholders to compare themselves with each other and learn from each other.

The dashboard, also built on Optimizely, is built on a separate domain in order to make it available to everyone. By using Optimizely integrations for the platform, Google Analytics, and Facebook, data is retrieved and then visualized in charts with clear indicators.

This information, both within and between the different brands, is also available to support marketers so that they can draw conclusions about trends and behavior across and between markets.

Qualitative user studies are provided on an ongoing basis by other external partners to Nobia, who conduct in-depth interviews and user analyses.

A business-driven solution that achieves established targets

Today, conclusions and business benefits have been documented to support ROI as well as the goal of more satisfied customers and increased sales.

• Organic traffic has increased by approximately 30%.
• 15-20% of visitors visit the image gallery. These visitors tend to continue to store more than other visitors do.
• The most valuable conversion on the sites takes place when a visitor books an appointment with a kitchen designer. Since the launch, the total number of appointments increased by 20% thanks to simplified workflows and a more targeted digital marketing effort to achieve this target. In addition to direct appointments, the sites deliver beyond expectations when it comes to getting a bigger share of the visitors to search for and find information about the stores.

Besides the business benefits mentioned above, strong synergies and better quality and continuity are achieved by creating and operating a common platform where all Nobia brands can share the development and administrative costs associated with their digital marketing efforts and the web. Quality assurance is simplified, too, when headquarters can serve as a center of excellence.

Actual specific customer value created is a simpler, faster and easier interaction between the customer and the brand.

With the power of Optimizely's Content Cloud, visitors can choose to engage by creating their own account where they can gather inspirational ideas. Whenever they want to, the visitors can then share all the information with a selected kitchen store to speed up and simplify the buying process. It’s precisely this ability to collaborate with the customer through digital collaboration workspaces that have sped up the buying process and has created a much greater understanding of customer motivation and behavior.

This combination results in greater customer engagement even before the in-person interaction as well as opportunities for more proactive lead nurturing throughout the process.