Devotion Designed the New Digital Platform of Real Pet Food
Devotion designed the new digital platform of Real Pet Food Company. Their main goal was to deliver consistency and efficiency across the suite of local and international brands.
Real Pet Food Company
An eCommerce enabled digital platform that drives the digital presence for some of the world’s fastest-growing pet food brands.
Background
Real Pet Food Company started life in Queensland under the name V.I.P. Petfoods in 1994. Since then, it has grown into an internationally recognised brand and series of consumer-brands, under the Real Pet Food Company name.
In November 2017, the business was acquired by one of Asia Pacific’s leading investors. The vision is simple – to be a Top 5 Global Pet Food Business by 2022 by continuing to produce healthy, nutritious, and real food for dogs and cats!
The Challenge
Real Pet Food Company were on Kentico and had been using it for some time. The consumer websites for their flagship brands, including Ivory Coat, Billy + Margot, and Farmers Market, were failing to engage, drive conversion, and deliver value back to the consumer.
Additionally, they were proving increasingly difficult to manage, and a full digital ecosystem rebuild was required. The primary goal for this was to deliver platform consistency and efficiency across the suite of brands and ensure ease of rollout to key strategic markets, including the USA, UK, and China.
The Solution
When architecting the new platform, Devotion had to approach it from a strategic rollout point of view. What consumer brands needed to be in what market and by when? This simple starting point allowed for the prioritisation of features, functionality, and ultimately design. As the platform was designed to underpin every website being delivered, their focus had to be initially broad, to ensure the approach of Devotion catered to all users and their specific use cases.
Their approach to UX focused on elevating the individual product propositions within each brand, and clearly communicating to the customer why they should buy that particular product for their pet. It sounds easy, but in a category, that’s experiencing such growth, delivering an easily understood “reason for being”, can be challenging. As this platform was being architected to service all brands, consideration also needed to be given to defining the eCommerce angle, as some brands sell online (to some audiences), and only in some markets.
Kentico EMS was selected for its extremely powerful content management capabilities as well as the ability to automate much of Real Pet Food Company’s digital marketing needs. A detailed integration with SKUvantage has been undertaken, as all product information resides within this third-party system.
Kentico EMS allows for the delivery of “culture” versions of the website to different markets. This has enabled Devotion to roll out versions with different products, language, and at times, visuals. For a business and group of brands expanding at such speed, this capability is of paramount importance.
Design-wise, each brand had to be seen to be clean, simple, and “retail focussed”. Design thinking from a mobile-first perspective was also key, to ensure ease of customer access to further information when shopping.
The result is a digital platform capable of servicing the entire Real Pet Food Company suite of brands, locally and internationally.
About Devotion
Devotion is an independently owned, full-service digital agency. They combine creativity with deep technical understanding to create smart, results-driven experiences.
