New Visual Design and CMS Revitalizes An Iconic American Brand

Data-Driven & Mobile-First Visual Design

Valvoline’s previous design was dark and confusing. Its genesis was also not one of mobile-first best practices. The century and a half old company was searching for a new visual design that was as sophisticated as their brand yet captivating for their audience. Guidance performed an analysis of Valvoline’s target audience and based the design on those results.

The new elevated, mobile-first visual design provides a more intuitive experience for customers and offers a guided experience for users. The main navigation displays the key user journeys and clearly offers the value-add services Valvoline provides to its customers. Guidance achieved a balanced visual design language with select brand colors and a proper use of white space to call attention to CTAs and other interactive information.

On-the-go Store Locator Improves Omnichannel Experience

Guidance’s deepdive research into user behavior revealed important factors that would steer the design and technology stack. One such discovery uncovered a deep dependence on mobile technology and on-the-go store locator tools. Many customers book their oil change well in advance but just as many find an opening in their schedule for a quick unscheduled visit.
Customers search for instant oil change shops using their mobile devices and having a store locator solution was an absolute business priority.

Valvoline selected Rio SEO for a flawless store location solution tightly integrated with Optimizely Digital Experience Platform CMS. The new tool puts Valvoline’s Instant Oil Change shops on the map for increased location discovery and location-specific information. More than just a location finder for brick and mortar shops, the locator enables customers to find services and even browse careers by city, zip, or ip address. The locator also offers feature and location-specific filter options.

Beyond search optimization, Rio SEO delivers a functional, custom on-page locator that integrates core assets and design for a consistent brand voice across the customer’s journey. Furthermore, for customers who use Google Maps to find oil change locations, Rio SEO ensures the Valvoline brand is seen any time a customer searches for “oil change”, with up-to-date information across all locations.

Digital Wallet Fuels Customer Loyalty

Valvoline heavily incentivizes oil change coupons on their desktop and mobile website. Coupons have helped grow their market share, increase sales volume, cultivate loyal customers, and alleviate competition. These digital coupons are available to print, email or text to customers and encourage repeat purchases as well as help to grow the database of customer information (phone and email address).

Coupons are managed directly in the Optimizely Digital Experience Platform CMS with a location-based solution used to display coupons for specific oil change locations. Customers can create digital wallets using their custom coupons and manage all their coupons from the VIOC.com website. Guidance developed custom middleware using Epsilon to pull the coupon information from Optimizely Digital Experience Platform CMS for accurate display across country-wide coupons all the way down to each shop location’s specific coupon or offering.

Upon mobile browser detection, the new coupon functionality will automatically feature coupons for download directly to the user’s smartphone digital wallet. Digital coupons stored directly in a smartphone’s digital wallet gives customers instant access to all offers and deals in one convenient place. Customers can easily download the coupons, present the offers upon checkout for discounts and all coupons are scanned by the local service center using the barcode.

Driving Increased Revenue with Ratings and Reviews

Ratings and reviews have been proven to increase customer confidence and ultimately boost conversion rates. This is especially true for the service-driven automotive industry and products related to services such as oil changes and car maintenance. Customers want to know what other customers truly felt about the service post-purchase and relevant content along with honest reviews is invaluable to the purchase journey. Many online reputation management solutions provide insights on the website level which is helpful but doesn’t provide the competitive insights to succeed across all channels.

Guidance helped to integrate a solution that aggregates ratings and reviews from multiple platforms and channels and makes it easily accessible to the customer. Social networks and online review sites are influencing customers like never before and responding to customers and solving issues through these channels is imperative to stay ahead and inspire customer loyalty. SMG ratings has given Valvoline the flexibility to streamline their online reputation management through multiple platforms and networks including their website, Google reviews, Yelp and Facebook. Instead of painstakingly checking the ratings and reviews for each of their brand’s locations, SMG gives Valvoline high level overview of their aggregated star ratings and allows the company to syndicate through multiple networks.