Digital melt-in-your-mouth moments.
Krispy Kreme ANZ digitally recreates the joyful, indulgent experience of its shops with Adobe Commerce.
Established
2003
40+ shops across the region
1,500 employees
Sydney, Australia
https://www.krispykreme.com.au
Balance Internet
2X
Nearly doubled brand conversion rates year-over-year
Products
Objectives
Digitally replicate the joyful experience of visiting a Krispy Kreme store
Enable products to be purchased faster and more easily online
Make it easier for customers to request fundraising efforts for their organisations
Gain a better understanding of what customers across ANZ want
Results
Increased regional e-commerce revenue from 5% to 27% during pandemic
Nearly doubled brand conversion rates year-over-year and increased average orders by up to 20%
Transformed fundraising ordering process using automated workflow
Reduced resources for site administration and management
Bringing Vernon Rudolph’s delicious legacy to new markets
In 1937, Vernon Rudolph bought a secret, yeast-raised doughnut recipe from a French chef in New Orleans. He then rented a building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; and began selling Krispy Kreme doughnuts to nearby supermarkets.
As the delicious scent of cooking doughnuts wafted through the air, passers-by stopped to ask if they could buy some. Rudolph knew he was onto something and promptly cut a hole in the wall so he could fulfill their requests.
Fast forward six decades and Australians and New Zealanders got their first taste of Rudolph’s doughnuts - from original glazed to strawberry iced and chocolate custard - when Krispy Kreme opened its doors in the region in 2003. Supplementing the shops was a regional website that enabled customers to peruse items and place orders.
“We wanted to modernise, personalise and streamline customer journeys while making our website more secure and reflective of the experience of coming to our shops in person. Adobe Commerce offers the ideal cloud foundation for everything we want to accomplish.”
Jason Fraser
Head of IT, Krispy Kreme ANZ
Replicating the sensory experience of Krispy Kreme shops online
A few years ago, Krispy Kreme ANZ’s e-commerce and IT teams decided to collaborate on a strategic upgrade of the website. They wanted to make it easier to access and use, faster to order from, and richer in content and information.
To maintain the brand’s reputation for freshness and service, they sought to strengthen integration between the online store, production and fulfillment partners. As a first step, Krispy Kreme ANZ enlisted the support of longtime e-commerce partner Balance Internet, which suggested upgrading Krispy Kreme’s legacy Magento e-commerce platform to Adobe Commerce.
“We wanted to modernise, personalise and streamline customer journeys while making our website more secure and reflective of the experience of coming to our shops in person,” explains Jason Fraser, Head of IT at Krispy Kreme ANZ. “Adobe Commerce offers the ideal cloud foundation for everything we want to accomplish.”
“The transformation of our fundraising process perfectly illustrates the flexibility and depth of Adobe Commerce. Put simply, the platform can handle any business challenge we throw at it.”
Jason Fraser
Head of IT, Krispy Kreme ANZ
Little touches drive customer loyalty
Next, the project team had to ensure that the website met a wide range of functional requirements, such as providing an immediate, warm welcome to visitors; enabling customers to customise a box of doughnuts using a drag-and-drop interface; allowing customers to add personalised messages such as ‘Happy Birthday’ or ‘Congratulations’ to their orders; placing more shopping baskets around the site to accelerate ordering; and showcasing product and company information on interactive slider-bars.
Another goal was to transform the historically cumbersome fundraising process, through which a school, sports club or non-profit organisation orders doughnuts to sell and raise money. Previously, the ordering process involved completing PDF forms found on the website, emailing them to the customer service team and following up via phone. The manual process was time-consuming and resource-intensive for both customers and Krispy Kreme staff.
Today, using Commerce, fundraising requests are placed like any other order on the website via seamless, automated workflows, but are marked as ‘events’ that receive special handling.
“The transformation of our fundraising process perfectly illustrates the flexibility and depth of Adobe Commerce,” says Fraser. “Put simply, the platform can handle any business challenge we throw at it.”
Driving operational and cost efficiencies
Fraser adds that in contrast to the company’s earlier HTML website, making updates via Commerce is quicker and easier: “Whether adding new products, amending price lists or changing fonts and colours, Adobe Commerce makes changes a snap. When the company went public in the U.S. recently, we had to make extensive updates to the site, but the platform tools are so simple to use that it took an hour or two at the most.”
Krispy Kreme uses Commerce as a multi-site, multi-tennanted platform as a service (PaaS) solution with no on-site infrastructure to worry about, so the company has been able to reduce the resources required to operate the site. This enables team members to spend more time growing and innovating on customers’ online shopping experiences.
Another benefit to Commerce is the native integration and partnership with New Relic for data analytics. This tool helps Krispy Kreme stay on top of site performance and health, understand how customers interact with the website and receive alerts for any major issues and bottlenecks.
For example, the e-commerce team can track how people respond to particular products or special offers, visualise peak traffic times and pinpoint site drops. With these insights, they can make continuous improvements to the site; scale up capacity for promotions, holidays or seasonal peaks; suggest changes to the regional menu; and alert senior management to issues or emerging trends.
Financial impact across the region
Krispy Kreme’s Commerce implementation turned out to be well-timed: the work was completed just as the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. Having an upgraded website during this challenging time allowed Krispy Kreme to leverage from its ommichannel approach.
“Making our products quick and easy to buy from anywhere across the region helped insulate us from the worst of the pandemic and put us in a stronger position as it subsided,” says Fraser.
In fact, average transaction value increased by up to 20% after the site was upgraded, with more repeat visitors; and brand conversion rates have almost doubled year-over-year.
“With Adobe Commerce as our e-commerce platform and Balance Internet as our e-commerce partner, we have been able to achieve our ambious CX revamp and strategy goals - there are no limits to what we can achieve across the region.”
Jason Fraser
Head of IT, Krispy Kreme ANZ
Looking toward the future
Fraser credits Balance Internet with much of the project’s success. In particular, he cites the team’s subject matter expertise, proactive mindset, responsiveness and creativity.
In the coming months, Fraser and Balance Internet plan to upgrade to the latest version of Commerce, which will yield even more improvements to the customer experience; while Krispy Kreme’s e-commerce team plans to strengthen fulfillment capabilities in New Zealand and introduce same-day deliveries across the ANZ region.
Reflecting on the implementation, Fraser says, “With Adobe Commerce as our e-commerce platform and Balance Internet as our e-commerce partner we have been able to achieve our ambious CX revamp and strategy goals - there are no limits to what we can achieve across the region.”
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