Objectives

An idea that produced what is regarded today as the best tasting ham in the world. Using the highest quality bone-in smoked ham, our founder Harry Hoenselaar created a special curing and cooking procedure, bringing out a one-of-a-kind taste that can only be described as perfection.

With its sweet, crunchy glaze enhancing the flavor of the bone-in smoked ham, Harry's patented spiral-slicing process made Honey Baked Ham the easy-to-serve centerpiece, becoming an instant staple at holiday dinners, celebrations and meaningful meals shared and savored by family and friends for over 60-years.

The Honey Baked Ham Company continues to be a family-owned business and serves customers online and at more than 400 year round retail locations in 40 states across the United States.

With the World's Best Ham at the center of what makes us great; The Honey Baked Ham Company needed an online ecommerce experience that held to the same value where the overall user experience and ease of purchase was redesigned to be a more seamless experience with our products and brand.

So we set out on a journey in January 2018 to elevate the consumer experience and align with the growth of our online ordering demand -- yes, we do ship ham directly to your doorstep!

Strategy and Execution

First, we researched the important elements needed to build a strong foundational platform with a partner that excels in omnichannel commerce. We selected NetSuite because of its built in flexility where we could design the experience we wanted while moving quickly to launch a completely new website before our 2018 holiday season.

Second was the aesthetics. We got our inspiration from what our consumers wanted and said through feedback surveys plus extensive focus groups where we could listen to their needs and understand more about their consumer journey. We wanted to match the in-store experience where consumers were able to receive in depth product knowledge and check out without friction.

Lastly, we knew responsive design was important to help us capture our growing mobile audience. We set out to reduce the amount of clicks to purchase and provide order history so consumers could login without any interruptions and click to ship.

Results

Since launching the new HoneyBakedOnline ecommerce website we have gone through one of our busiest times of the year --the 2018 holiday season successfully! Comparing Nov-Dec to last year we have seen a 24% increase in users and 33% growth in mobile traffic (3.15% vs 0.12% on mobile conversions) - demonstrating the effectiveness of our strategy to create a mobile-friendly experience.

Our conversion rate had a 15.45% increase which resulted in a 21% increase for online transactions. We even broke a record with the most online orders placed in one day - over 10,000! WOW! Our website metrics exceeded all expectations and even had numerous benefits including reducing Customer Service calls by 5,000. The new website provided robust product details, prepping and shipping information which kept people on the site and checking out. Online ordering is now 83% of all our shipped orders with the remainder coming through our Customer Service Call Center.

Launched in under one year on July 2018, our HoneyBakedOnline website featured a variety of improvements that helped get these outstanding results:

• Navigation and filtering: We spent time sorting our product line based on how our consumers shop. We created Gifts Under $, Dinner-based, Occasion and Product categories that were clear and curated with thought. We also added new filters to find products faster including serving size, gluten-free, flavors and price point. We added product badges to call our Best Sellers, New Arrivals, Special Offers so visually consumers could see which items were recommended. Consumers could easily compare products, share wish lists, social share and email products they were interested in to their family & friends to help narrow down their selection.
• Premium imagery and content: A critical need with purchasing food online, and one of the drivers to create trust and value with an online purchase. We enhanced our product imagery by 25% which rapidly enticed our consumers to make a selection and see all the components included at the price point shown. We added additional content such as serving size, meal preparation, shipping details and nutritional information.
• Intuitive ordering: A lot of the feedback we heard from our consumers were about making the check out easier to understand and faster to check out. Speed and ease! We switched around the check out components to start with recipient (shipping) details first since many of our consumers ship to multiple people in one order. This allowed our consumers to calculate shipping cost, add a gift message and chose their delivery date before entering their payment. It built trust in researching so consumers didn't feel like they had to give up too many personal details to figure out how much their order would be. We also added a lot of white space between each step to help focus on the needed actions without feeling overwhelming. For those that already had an account we made sure to capture and provide their order history on the new site; making it easier for them to select their recipients and/or billing address from a dropdown in the checkout. We added a review step so consumers could verify all the details were correct before placing their order.

BEST YEAR EVER!

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