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Syndicated primary navigation and headless architecture revitalize a beloved American brand.
5 minute read
This case study will be especially relevant for those interested in the following topics:
Average Time on Page
Increase in AOV
King Arthur Baking Company sought an upgraded and feature rich SaaS replatform that could support separate websites with a centralized CMS and shopping engine. The new site features a BigCommerce backend with a customized Drupal frontend to ensure one point of content entry for the global menu.
The headless King Arthur Baking Company solution maintains continuity of the customer’s authenticated user session across multiple sites, achieved by rewrites of storefront APIs to transmit the data. Page designs are reimagined and revitalized while, as one of the oldest companies in the country, preserving brand integrity, especially after a recent rebrand.
Shaped by hand, powered by heart: that’s the promise enshrined by King Arthur Baking Company, a leading American supplier of flour, raw ingredients, baking mixes, and cookbooks. Founded in 1790 as America’s first flour company, it is nearly as old as America itself — and has met baking needs every step of the way, from Martha Washington’s apple pie to the baking boom of 2020. It takes its mission beyond baking: it is 100% employee-owned, uses American-grown GMO-free wheat, and is a founding Bcorp. Through these initiatives, King Arthur Baking Company seeks to infuse all customer touchpoints with the comfort, familiarity and joy of baking.
Using King Arthur Baking Company’s existing Drupal CMS to power its browser navigation for the content site, the new system now syndicates content into BigCommerce. Both are styled to look complementary and consistent across the different systems.
Guidance’s solution now features a redesigned customer object with Cross Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) to manipulate the HTTP headers and site cookies. Customer authentication and cart information are maintained across the Drupal and BigCommerce sites. Cookie rewrites for the transmission of data, and widget APIs that process data, eliminate the need for manual data manipulation. Objects are taxonomized in order to create multi-level menus.
The headless approach exposes commerce capabilities within the Drupal version of the website. Syndicated primary navigation across Drupal and BigCommerce ensures one point of content entry for the global menu on both sites.
A customized syndicated approach ensures a seamless primary navigational experience across the entire website.
The site features nearly two dozen custom Page Builder widgets to help King Arthur Baking Company merchandise engaging shop pages. Using these widgets, dynamic CLPs, PLPs and PDPs are built quickly and efficiently.
Using reimagined UX and UI features, King Arthur Baking Company’s global menu hierarchy enjoys improved site organization. Updates to the navigation designed by Guidance ensure the UX between content immersion and shopping do not appear siloed. The Guidance approach normalizes navigation across both platforms using reusable blocks of UI. This results in commerce pages that evoke the same inspirational sentiment of the content pages without steering traffic away from shoppable pages.
The King Arthur Baking Company site now enjoys a newly-branded style guide with a thoughtful approach to visual design and customer experience. Special attention is paid to the proper use of the King Arthur Baking Company red, the manner in which products are showcased, and evoking a strong sense of community. Guidance’s innovative wireframes for “shop visual designs,” lifestyle photography and CX now support King Arthur Baking Company’s objective of baking as an ever-present source of familiarity and comfort.
Guidance’s customizations to the BigCommerce checkout and native forms pave the way for a unique Account Registration experience. Customized checkout functionality includes multiple shipping speeds, an option for gift messaging, Google Address Autocomplete integration, and enhancements for the display on the Order Summary and Shipping Method sessions. User registration workflows are streamlined, and ease of use is significantly improved from prior user registration through Drupal.
The BigCommerce theme integrates with the MegaMenu Creator tool and a customized Algolia search. A custom navigation XML schema is now used. Most importantly, customers can add items to orders through carousels like Best Sellers, Sales and Savings, and Customers Also Bought. This ensures a frictionless path to purchase and a maximized conversion rate.
The new architecture includes ten system integrations for payment, shipping, inventory management and site functionality. King Arthur Baking Company is now able to leverage the capabilities of Paymetric, PayPal by Braintree, HelpScout, Yotpo, Listrak, Algolia Search, AnnexCloud, Google Tag Manager, Back in Stock Product Alerts by Swym, and ShipperHQ.
In order to meet expectations for timeline and budget, Guidance uses site demos as significant pages are completed. These allow for feedback to shape further revisions, and allows King Arthur Baking Company to be involved in every step of the process.
Guidance holds regular meetings to ensure that all work meets King Arthur Baking Company’s standards. Given that employees are also company owners, the meetings regularly include many stakeholders.
King Arthur Baking Company is now a resource for all things baking and makes consumers feel inspired and connected, whether home bakers or professionals. The ideal tone to strike with the audience is to have content and presentation - like their products - be hand-crafted with care and love. Additionally, King Arthur Baking Company occupies a unique place between grain manufacturers and traditional kitchen retail stores, as the company produces and sells its own goods along with pans, tools and unique specialty items.
Guidance created a complete digital redesign and replatform for King Arthur Baking Company by developing an elegant headless solution leveraging the BigCommerce cart and catalog.
The brand has optimized their content management workflows by eliminating developer oversight of marketing activities. In addition, the customized checkout has provided an impactful uplift in cart conversion and customer satisfaction.
Guidance employed a full suite of creative and technical services to replatform King Arthur Baking Company to a SaaS architecture powered by BigCommerce. The new site features a BigCommerce backend with a customized Drupal frontend to ensure one point of content entry for the global menu. The headless King Arthur Baking Company solution maintains continuity of the customer’s authenticated user session across multiple sites.
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