Challenge
When one of the most popular refreshing vitamin drinks in Croatia, Cedevita, with 50 years of tradition, realised its website is in a need for refreshment, Netgen and Locastic teams rolled up their sleeves to meet the latest expectations of consumers for a more flexible and engaging platform. The existing website was ready for some improvements which would allow the brand to continue building lasting relationships with its consumers, not just through its established and recognized product quality and functional innovations, but through overall digital communication. By modernizing the website with increased flexibility and intensified user engagement, the overall idea was to find a way to reconnect and increase the emotional bond with the Generation CE - the generation which embraces creativity, regardless of the age, always remaining young at heart, understanding that connecting with people is what makes life beautiful. This brings us to two main challenges of the overall project. First, Generation CE is a rather wide target audience, as it encompasses various generations - children, students, grown-ups, grandparents, well… everyone! We had to be creative to find a way to communicate with so many different age groups. Especially, when there’s a rather short deadline involved. We had 35 days to come up with a refreshed website. The previous website was predominantly oriented on the product catalogue, but we wanted to pep it up with easier content management and more user engagement. Up until 2020, Cedevita had sweepstakes where players could apply codes from drinks consumed in cafes and win certain prizes. However, each year, those sweepstakes were on separate microsites that required users to register all over again. As the sweepstakes have generated significant interest from the consumers, the client recognized it as the perfect platform for a long-lasting upgrade of user engagement. But instead of having consumers wander on disconnected web apps, we decided to bring them all together. Generally speaking, with the new website, we wanted to respond to the overall attitude and demands of Generation CE, allowing them to engage and reconnect with the brand that they know and love so much.
Solution
Setting the stage with Netgen Layouts The first part of the project was oriented on migrating the existing content to an eZ platform and preparing a completely new design, which we worked on together with our friends from Locastic. During this step, we were focused on creating a web design that would be easy to navigate while supporting higher flexibility and consequently higher user engagement. This is where the Netgen Layouts stepped in, which were very helpful with landing pages management, but also solved many problems when adding new frequent changes as well. The new website easily became quite flexible and interactive as designed blocks implemented within Layouts offer quick, easy and fun, assembling to the website. In order to give consumers additional interactivity options, we added social media content from Cedevita and its consumers who could now easily share and comment on their experiences with the brand. The entire website was now available in five languages - Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian, Macedonian and English. In addition to that, we integrated the website with SAP Customer Data Cloud to enable our client with a better understanding of users. Taking the user engagement to the next level The most important addition of the new website we have implemented in the second phase was the integration of the sweepstake within a special application and Croatian and Slovenian consumers had the chance to try it out first. The application was helpful in many ways, both for consumers and the client. For example, consumers now had the option to log in and monitor their activities far more easily, keeping track of all existing games and winners. The entire process of participating in the game was very much simplified for consumers, with users being recognized upon their return. On the other hand, the client had a clear insight into extensive gaming stats, tracking immediately the number of codes applied or the number of users. There are some other new and interesting features, such as different levels of administration rights for the client, making it easier for different departments to log in and track the gaming stats and follow up with their activities more easily. Also, the application was built in a way to alarm if there had been some suspicious activities among the users (for example, a disproportionately large number of codes applied). Most importantly, this application now became a platform for continuous games throughout the year, thus increasing the engagement of consumers and creating a strong bond between them and the brand.
Results
This part makes us particularly proud as it shows quite simply how successfully the new website was implemented, catching consumers’ attention and encouraging them to take part in the games. And yes, it would be an understatement to say that we were dealing with unpredictable circumstances in 2020, caused by the Covid-19 pandemics, which affected all cafes and restaurants in the country to be closed, preventing users from applying any codes. The beginning of the sweepstake was pushed to start after the lockdown, when consumers returned to their routines visiting cafes again. However, we must have clicked the right buttons because the overall results were much better than in the previous year, both with Croatian and Slovenian consumers. Compared to 2019, the number of applied codes in Croatia grew by 48%, with a 60% increase of unique players. And in Slovenia, things have really gone crazy. The number of applied codes jumped by 300%, and the number of unique players grew by 280%. Turns out, the app became a place that Cedevita consumers like to visit quite frequently. The ease of use beat the hard times. The games are not over yet The app integrated within the new Cedevita website now serves as a place that consumers like to visit quite frequently. Based on the results, we can conclude that the user engagement has been definitely increased. But besides the prize-winning games on the website, which has proved its popularity, we have managed to increase the overall flexibility and simplicity of the website, not sacrificing its design or visual impression, thanks to Netgen Layouts.
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