Delivering a customer-centric online booking and buying experience for Protyre
Accelerating a dated online booking experience
Protyre, the UK’s largest independent tyre retailer, are on a mission to drive strategic growth, enhance customer experiences and make a step-change from the competition in a fast-moving automotive parts and servicing sector.
Increasing numbers of customers are choosing to purchase tyres and book servicing online. For Protyre this provided an opportunity to invest in the infrastructure that would allow it to take advantage of this ongoing change in customer behaviour and modernise their ecommerce experience.
BUSINESS NEED
Drive up sales through an ecommerce experience that meets changing customer needs and creates an agile, customer-centric experience.
CUSTOMER DEMAND
A frictionless digital booking and purchase experience, where users can order products and book MOTs and services with ease.
Challenge
Protyre had historically driven growth through the expansion of its retail presence, with 184 nationwide autocare centres providing a range of services from MOT and servicing to replacement tyre fitting. To keep up with changing customer demands, Protyre needed to develop a consistent long-term digital strategy to have a competitive edge.
Protyre’s existing digital experience was not created with the user in mind, leading to complex customer journeys, increased costs from poor operational efficiencies and missed revenue opportunities that could be overcome by adopting a more digital-first approach to offering its services.
In a highly competitive market, Protyre needed to evolve its ecommerce experience in order to achieve its ambitious growth plans.
Discovery
The project began with an initial discovery phase to establish how the strategic aims of the business could be realised via its retail network and digital estate. This included conducting user research in order to inform a reimagined user experience.
Following the discovery phase, it was agreed that upgrading the consumer ecommerce experience to a modernised, future-ready solution, was critical to succeeding in an ever changing retail environment.
Protyre engaged Candyspace to assess Protyre’s target personas, map key user journeys and define a new technical architecture, website structure and creative design for their new website, underpinned by data and user research. This combination of customer evidence and UX best practice would then be used to inform the technology choice and implementation of the new modern platform.
Solution
In order to meet the strategic aims of the business, a composable solution was selected to offer Protyre’s internal teams flexibility and agility. This would also facilitate better operationalisation of data, which needed to flow seamlessly between platforms and be surfaced quickly in the front end presentation layer.
By separating the front end experience from the back end technologies through a headless approach, Candyspace were able to deliver a customer experience that was unconstrained by legacy technologies.
We adopted a tech stack based on MACH architecture (Microservices, API-first, Cloud native and Headless) to deliver a best-in-breed set of capabilities for Protyre across Ecommerce, CMS, PIM, DAM and Search, selecting Commercetools, Storyblok, Pimberly, Bynder and Algolia respectively. We also designed and developed both the front end experience, and an integration mediation layer that orchestrates all the APIs, product data, legacy system integration and content.
We then integrated the platform into Protyre’s existing stock and scheduling systems, to provide web and mobile visitors with personalised tyre recommendations for their vehicle based on their registration and historic user behaviour.
Results
Protyre is now able to provide a frictionless online ordering and booking experience, where users can order tyres, book into a tyre centre with ease, and arrange an MOT check in a single transaction.
Candyspace supported Protyre’s digital transformation, enabling improved website performance, increased business agility, and leveraging external infrastructure services to improve data efficiencies.
Protyre’s modern new tech stack allows for improved marketing and merchandising effectiveness, accommodating complex price scenarios and scheduling for tyres and MOTs in hundreds of Protyre’s garages, enabling the automotive brand to better meet their strategic objectives across their retail and wholesales businesses.
Candyspace were able to produce some amazing results for Protyre, including:
67% revenue growth
64% profit growth
136% increase in number of tyres sold
28% reduction in website load time
98% increase in overall conversion rate (115% increase on mobile and 65% increase on desktop)
It’s been a major transformation for us, but Candyspace has been a first-class partner with their experience of MACH, their guidance, planning, foresight, implementation and support across the entire process.
