Salsify enables brands to manage all aspects of their presence on the digital shelf from a single platform. The tool tightly integrates PIM, DAM, digital catalogs, syndication, GDSN, digital shelf analytics, enhanced content, third-party marketplaces and chat capabilities into one, purpose-built, enterprise SaaS platform. With Salsify, companies can centralize and manage product content across the entire organization from a single place and then analyze their performance across all retailers so they can continuously optimize their sales.
Salsify was ranked the 87th fastest-growing company in North America on Deloitte’s 2019 Technology Fast 500. Their product is used across 80 countries worldwide by thousands of companies — including Coca-Cola, Bosch, GSK, Asics, Rawlings and Fruit of the Loom.
Their Challenge
Salsify’s website was clunky, hard-to-update and didn’t reflect their brand very well. They needed a new site that was clean-coded and easy to update in-house.
Historically, Salsify used internal resources and freelancers to maintain their website, but they wanted to take a leap to invest in an agency partner. This led them to look for a partner who was familiar with the HubSpot CMS, could respond to requests in a timely manner and offered the potential to expand their partnership further in the future.
When they came to New Breed, a Diamond-tier HubSpot partner with some of the first certified HubSpot developers on staff, they had multiple challenges that needed to be overcome in the development of their new website.
Challenge 1: tight turnaround time
Salsify reached out to New Breed at the end of 2018 about the redesigned site, which they wanted to launch by the start of 2019, giving only about six weeks to completely plan, develop and launch a minimum viable product (MVP) site.
Challenge 2: flexible master template for all site pages
Salsify wanted a website where every page was built from a single master template with drag-and-drop modules being used to customize individual pages.
The goal of this was to empower all members of the marketing team to be able to edit the site without needing help from a developer.
Challenge 3: collaborative strategy
Salsify needed a partner that could, and would, work collaboratively with them to develop the new site — in spite of the tight timeline.
They had designers on staff who wanted to design parts of the site. Additionally, their marketers needed to be involved in determining how the site would function so they could update it in the future. Finally, Salsify worked with a search firm that needed to be looped in to ensure updates to content and webpages didn’t negatively impact their rankings and keyword strategy.
Challenge 4: future-proof
Even though the site was being built on a tight timeline, it was important to Salsify that it be scalable.
They wanted the foundational module system to be easily expanded over time through the addition of new modules or increased functionality of existing modules. Plus, they wanted a site that could deploy personalized content and an account-based marketing strategy in the future.
Our Process in Motion
1. Research buyer personas
Salsify already had a well-established sales strategy, so the New Breed team familiarized ourselves with their buyer personas and their goals and challenges.
Salsify has a very focused target audience with only a select number of people who have the buying authority to purchase their product. Because of that, it’s essential their inbound strategy is highly targeted and focuses on attracting qualified leads as opposed to a large quantity of leads.
2. Information architecture
Once we understood who the site was intended to reach and convert, we worked with Salsify to determine what portions of the site were essential for the MVP launch and what would be included in the phased launch plan later on.
To accomplish this, we consulted with both the Salsify team and their search firm. The Salsify team knew what was mission-critical for the new site and what elements of their current site were most in need of an update in order to accurately represent their brand. The search firm provided insight to ensure no valuable pages were lost in the re-launch and the structure and naming of high-performing pages didn’t change too drastically.
Once all parties had agreed upon the site map for the MVP and a plan for the phased launch, we moved on with the development of the modules.
3. Design prototypes
We built out low-fidelity wireframes of every common module type we use in our websites, such as heroes, resource cards, client testimonials, videos, etc. The Salsify team selected which of those modules they would need for their site’s launch and sent along specifications for additional custom modules that they would need for the MVP launch.
Once the module list was determined, they were divided amongst the New Breed and Salsify teams to be fully developed to create a full module library to use across the site.
Since the core of the site’s strategy was modular design, we didn’t mock up individual pages, but rather mocked up the modules and then assigned the finished modules to pages and prototyped those pages, which allowed us to hit the ground running in order to meet Salsify’s aggressive timeline.
4. Soft launch production:
The site pages were stood up with filler content in HubSpot, and the site content was developed by the Salsify team. Because of the way we built the site, with the flexible drag and drop editing and modules built to be intuitive to use, both parties were able to help flow content directly into the new site.
Once all the pages were created and filled with finalized content, they were linked together in the HubSpot CMS Staging Area.
We also did training with the Salsify team to empower them to help build out the new site. Training at this point enabled them to gain familiarity with the site before it launched.
5. MVP launch
While we had the minimum viable site that we’d all agreed upon, there were still some site pages that couldn’t be completely taken down even though they weren’t prioritized as part of the initial redesign. To solve for the short-term UX problem those older pages could pose, we applied the updated header, footer and text styling to them so they would be consistent with the new site pages while they were queued up to be rebuilt.
6. Phased rollout of additional updates
After the launch of the MVP site, we continued working with them collaboratively to build out the rest of the site using an agreed upon list of goals. We determined priorities on a monthly basis and continued transitioning the entire site into the new modular system.
Results
Conversion Rate
Upon the new site going live, Salsify started seeing immediate results. In the first month post-launch, Salsify generated 174.6% more contacts than they had pre-launch.
While the lead rate spiked, sessions increased by 5.38% amounting in a 42.08% session-to-lead conversion rate increase in the three months immediately following the launch.
Site Speed
Following its launch, the website received an average Google PageSpeed Insights desktop score of 82. The previous site had an average desktop score of 68, meaning a 20.5% increase in site speed.
Marketing Efficiency
Users across corporate marketing, demand generation, product marketing and design teams were all able to create and launch pages in a matter of days or even hours, rather than weeks.
Company Growth
Over the first nine months of 2019 alone, Salsify increased its annual recurring revenue into its existing customer base by 83%.
The Impact
The MVP site was launched on time, meeting Salsify’s tight timeline.
“I don’t think I’ve ever worked with a company that’s been able to turn around such an ambitious project in such a short period of time,” says Salsify Co-Founder and CMO Rob Gonzalez.
Close collaboration between New Breed and Salsify resulted in a website that Salsify was proud of — and could update themselves.
“We value their ability to deliver in the short term while creating a platform that puts the power in the hands of the users, not a team of developers, says Peter Crosby, VP of Corporate Marketing at Salsify.
Additionally, the site was future-ready. The two companies continued to collaborate post-launch to expand upon the site throughout 2019, and that partnership will continue into 2020 as Salsify starts employing ABM strategies across their site.
You can explore the full website here and see more examples of New Breed's design capabilities in our web portfolio.
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