Sarah Robinson has dedicated her career to delivering outstanding experiences in the hospitality and culinary sectors. She brings a tremendous appreciation for high-touch, service-oriented strategies to her role as general manager of global software products for Breville, the Australia-based small kitchen appliance maker winning over consumers in dozens of markets worldwide.

In business for 90 years, Breville has a stellar reputation for designing and manufacturing high-quality home countertop appliances including espresso machines, air fryers, sandwich presses, blenders, sous vide cookers, and more. In charge of the company’s websites for marketing directly to consumers in 22 countries, Robinson understands that Breville’s success depends not just on shipping boxes of appliances, but on delivering satisfying, end-to-end customer experiences.

“Our goal is to provide customers with the experiences and results they’re looking for. They may buy an espresso machine or an oven from us, but what they really want is delicious barista quality coffee or an amazing roast chicken dinner in the comfort of their home,” says Robinson.

Breville’s websites fill a critical role in supporting customers along their Breville journeys. The websites not only influence purchasing decisions but also what happens after customers open a box, providing them with details about how to use products and offering up inspiring food photography and videos. Recipes foster devotion by helping home chefs master the preparation and presentation to wow tastebuds and impress guests.

Feeding demand for convenient, delicious cooking at home

In recent years, as Breville looked to expand to more than a dozen new countries, it faced constraints from its content management system (CMS). To enable the company’s infrastructure to efficiently scale at the speed the business required, the team made the decision to migrate the company’s websites to Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service from an older, on-premises version of the software. As a result, Breville’s implementation team partnered with the Adobe Ultimate Support to successfully complete the migration.

The cloud approach automates upgrades of the latest features and security protections, reducing dependency on Breville’s Technology Services team while supporting the high availability and performance that website visitors expect. By deploying a headless architecture, the company leverages Adobe technology as its primary vehicle for global content distribution and curation while maintaining flexibility to choose front-end solutions that are the best fit for its use cases.

Using out-of-the-box components helps Breville’s internal development teams accelerate their work. The company operates in multiple regions across eight brands, so the team uses Content Fragments and Experience Fragments to create branded, individual customer experiences that are more consistent and easier to update.

As a result, Robinson’s team can take advantage of a single, more global website template and easily adjust smaller items to individual market needs. “We can layer on the brand and the styling by re-using most of our primary content assets while customizing certain aspects for particular countries or languages,” Robinson says.

The solution simplified the approach to launching new websites for Baratza and Lelit, two of Breville’s recent acquisitions. “It would have taken a long time to re-think every brand and start afresh. With our new environment, we can re-use 50% to 60% of our core content and then add in the rest of the more customized elements, which become part of our content library moving forward,” says Robinson. “We’ve halved our time to market for a full ecommerce site, which is a significant achievement.”

Microsite standardization accelerates time to market

The time savings free Breville’s teams to focus on providing new capabilities to its customers, such as better pre-purchase experiences that help ensure customers get the best value and product fit for their needs. The team transformed more than 100 microsites into landing page experiences with a category or product focus. In-depth product information and decision tools help shoppers select the ideal coffee machine, juicer, countertop oven, or other appliance of interest.

“Our 100-plus microsites were previously very bespoke. They had different designs and we were apprehensive about the possibility of each one requiring a new build,” says Robinson. “Since we standardized them on one primary build with a reusable component strategy, we were able to re-launch them all in months instead of in years. The benefits in terms of time, costs, and scalability are considerable.”

Robinson credits Adobe Ultimate Support with smoothing the company’s migration to its new cloud environment. “It’s great to see that we’re making productive use of most of the new capabilities so soon,” says Robinson. “We’ve developed a strong working partnership between our tech team, our product team, and Adobe Ultimate Support.”

Proactive customer care

In the past, the majority of Breville’s customers — including those who prefer to purchase in-person at the retail stores carrying Breville products — would interact with the company through its call center.

“Our online capability now provides access to tutorials, training, masterclasses, and recipes with immediate ability for customers to self service for their needs while spending more engaging time with their products,” says Robinson.

“We pride ourselves on premium and personalized attention. Now our customers can access support services online, with that same high level of thoughtful handholding,” she continues. “It’s the best feeling when we successfully help customers master a food moment so they can enjoy a delightfully smooth flat white or a succulent roast chicken cooked to perfection at home.”