The sweet taste of digital success:

Website re-platform to HubSpot Content Hub Enterprise generates more ‘user love’ for iconic Kiwi brand

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For the period 1 May to 30 November and compared to the previous year:

450K+

Users Per
Month

 

13.8%↑

Average Engagement Time

 

16%↑

Engagement per session

 

"Since moving to HubSpot, we've seen an improvement in overall user engagement. The average engagement time per user has increased, and the site has become much more agile for us to manage."
Rosemary
Rosemary Martin

Digital Manager, Retail

The Client

Chelsea Sugar: a household brand leveraging inbound

Since 1884 Chelsea Sugar has been a staple for New Zealand bakers, dominating the category with its sugar and syrup products.

Brand and user-generated recipe content has built a website with high search authority and boasting traffic of over 450,000 monthly visitors.

The Challenge

Tech holding back vision of ‘most-loved baking site’

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A disadvantage of being an inbound marketing innovator was that Chelsea Sugar’s content management system (CMS) was ageing. Chelsea Sugar’s position as New Zealand’s most loved baking website’ was becoming threatened by an inflexible CMS with poor usability and support.

Chelsea Sugar’s marketing team realised with the right technology they could better leverage the immense value of the 2,000+ recipes and over 20,000 associated consumer reviews on their website, and decided to evaluate new platform options. Seeking a modern, open, usable and well-supported platform, Chelsea Sugar selected HubSpot Content Hub Enterprise with Concentrate as its implementation partner.

Photo Credit:  Chelsea

Wrong ingredients 

  • Outdated platform: the original CMS platform was no longer supported, and re-platforming was essential to future-proof the site.
  • User-experience: the website struggled to grow its engagement time per user and engagement rates. 
  • Page performance: slow loading times and poor Core Web Vitals impacted the site’s usability.
  • Search and navigation: poor searchability resulted in users leaving the website to search via Google, while complicated menus made it difficult for users to find relevant recipes.

Other critical requirements included optimising the site for mobile devices and future-proofing for easy updates and scalability.

The Solution

The beauty of simplicity

Concentrate proposed removing complexity as the primary solution to transforming the consumer’s digital experience, and by harnessing the HubSpot platform to focus on:

  • Making it simpler for consumers to find, navigate, search and interact with the website, and in particular the recipe content.
  • Making it simpler for Chelsea Sugar to maintain and enhance the website, responding to consumer needs, driving promotions and other growth initiatives.

Fresh ingredients

  • Platform: implement HubSpot to provide better tools for managing and amplifying large volumes of owned and user-generated content
  • Experience: transform the visitor experience with new visual design to showcase core written and video recipe content, especially for mobile users, who accounted for 80% of recipe page visits
  • Migration: moving over 2,000+ recipes and more than 20,000 associated reviews to the new platform while making sure all content remained easily searchable and connected to relevant products.
  • Training: equipping the Chelsea Sugar team with skills to manage and measure the new website
  • Architecture: Leveraging the underlying HubSpot CRM system to power the recipe database was a critical success factor.
Concentrate - SEO mockup - AUG24 (800 x 1000 px)-1
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Harnessing custom objects for content complexity

Traditionally Concentrate had employed HubDB for complex content websites. With the Chelsea Sugar website requiring growing content of 2,000+ recipes, over 20,000 reviews and multiple products to be associated, a more scalable approach was architected. Mapping custom objects for recipes, reviews and products provided a useable, future-proofed approach that harnesses the power of the CMS’ underlying HubSpot CRM.

Photo Credit: Canva

The Results

Transforming engagement generates more user love

Chelsea Sugar’s position as New Zealand’s most loved baking site has been strengthened with the HubSpot-driven website. It has delivered impressive outcomes across various metrics, enhancing both user engagement and site management capabilities. Most importantly, it has been about making the site ‘more loved’ by users.

"Since the launch, we've seen an improvement in overall user engagement. The average engagement time per user has increased, and the site has become much more agile for us to manage."
Rosemary
Rosemary Martin

Digital Manager, Retail

Key Results

19.9%% ↑ Direct traffic:

Making it the second largest source of traffic after organic search.

13.8% ↑ Average engagement time:

Reflecting a deeper level of interaction with the site’s content.

16% ↑ Engagement per session:

Increased by 16.4%.

Impact

Driving long term engagement and success

The revamped Chelsea Sugar website, in its new HubSpot home, has boosted user engagement and streamlined site management, delivering a better experience for both customers and the internal team.

"User engagement has been fantastic. We've seen improvements in engagement rates across the board," says Rosemary. "Direct traffic has increased, page views have spiked, and our users are spending more time on the site."

"We’re receiving great feedback from customers. People are finding the site easier to navigate, and they’re using the search function a lot more than they did before."

Beyond user metrics, the new site has empowered the Chelsea team to execute their content strategy more effectively. "The platform's drag-and-drop functionality makes it super user-friendly," Rosemary explains. "I can quickly create landing pages and make updates without needing technical support, which wasn't possible before."

"The Concentrate team went above and beyond, especially in the final stages," says Rosemary. "It really felt like we were all working toward a shared goal. There are new features we’d like to implement, and without hesitation, we'll be working with Concentrate again."

An Award Winning Solution

Concentrate's project with Chelsea Sugar has been named a winner in the prestigious Semiannual HubSpot Impact Awards 2024.  Achieving top scores, this project took out a Product Excellence Impact award in the APAC region for demonstrating HubSpot expertise and we couldn't be prouder!

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If you'd like to find out more about how Concentrate can do for your organisation what we’ve done for our other clients , don't hesitate to get in touch.