Provincial Home Living
A lasting digital strategy for a timeless brand.

the brief

Established in 2002, Provincial Home Living has celebrated success after success with their brick and mortar stores. Their selection of beautifully crafted products, immersive visual merchandising & accessible locations around Australia, has been a huge achievement for Provincial over the years, resulting in a brand which stands the test of time and a strong customer following.

For that reason, Provincial approached WOOF Creative, driven to achieve the same success online, to rethink their digital marketing strategy and create a sustainable model to meet the growing demands of the business.

Working closely with Provincial, we recognised the key to their longevity was based on the following factors…

BRAND - aspirational, timeless,

PRODUCT - carefully curated collection of homewares and furniture

POS - beautiful visual merchandising, immersive in-store experience

Because Provincial had such a strong customer following already, the challenge we set ourselves was to try and align the digital experience to the in-store customer journey. With the e-commerce store being the end destination for the customer journey, we identified various channels where we could bring the brand to life and use to drive sales online. But that would also simultaneously support and not cannibalise the bricks and mortar segment of the business.

Provincial Home Living Digital marketing user acquisition flow chart

the plan

Therefore the next step was to map out a critical activation path. Working with Provincial to implement a phase at a time to drive sustainable growth whilst delivering on budget. Once each phase was implemented we then trained Provincial’s in-house Marketing & Creative team to take over day to day management and content creation to enable a more cost effective implementation, increasing ROI by reducing management costs.

Provincial Home Living - ecommerce, a critical activation path for sustainable growth

website approach

The first challenge we set ourselves was to tackle the website.
When you step into a Provincial Home Living store, you are immediately immersed into a Provincial lifestyle. Products big or small are carefully curated into rooms, and customers are encouraged to explore the space.
The website needed to house thousands of products, some sellable online, some only available in store. It needed to be easy to search and find the right product.

easy to use

With thousands of products available to purchase, the main navigation had to be easy to use. Categories have been carefully selected and grouped by room (departments), with subcategories housing small and large items you would find in each space.

beautiful products on display

The craftsmanship of each product piece in a Provincial store is key to its success. Design in Melbourne and manufactured around the globe, we wanted the products to be the hero. Each photograph on the Provincial website has been carefully composed to showcase it's best features, with consideration in mind for the end medium of where it will be placed on the website.

first impressions matter

The retail space is a fast moving industry, and Provincial needed their homepage to be updated on the fly. Creating a set of modules for each section, the homepage has the flexibility to be chopped and changed depending on the campaign. Banners, large and small can be easily repositioned, to ensure the right attention is drawn to people who first land on the page.

e-commerce

Built on the Magento platform, the site was integrated with Provincial Home Living's POS sale system. Developed as the needs grew site features were introduced every quarter to continually evolve the user experience and refine the sales process. From simple additions like "SALE" and "NEW" banners to more complicated A.I. driven predictive search results, the site has not stood still since inception. Including many features developed in the back end to simplify business processes, reducing shipping times and reduce double handling.

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Provincial Home Living -e-commerce, built on magento - simplifying the business process & increasing efficiency

e-catalogue

Working alongside Provincial, we created an elegantly designed catalogue which would be released during special occasions. A mixture of beautifully photographed products, prices and direct links to the online store, helped achieve multiple goals - accessible content for the user 24/7 on any device and a cost-effective solution to distributing catalogues without printing & distribution costs.
 
Furthermore, this gave Provincial flexibility in time & effort to release catalogues more frequently, effectively showcase more products and curate them together as they would in-store. It has become a powerful marketing addition for Provincial and continues to drive sales during their busy seasonal months.

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e-magazine

To provide Provincial customers with a more all encompassing experience and to provide a channel for more detailed interaction, the Living Provincial  Magazine was created.
 
Unlike the catalogue, the magazine wasn’t to be focused on product and price, but rather of unique content and articles. A platform to enable the engagement of customers with the brand on a personal level. A space dedicated to celebrating timeless design, effortless elegance, and Provincial style.
 
Articles on getaway retreats, collaborations with interior editors & food editors, behind the scenes content have made this platform successful in becoming an online destination for the community to go to when they want to be inspired.
 
With a few additions to products throughout the magazine, these were strategically placed for any user that aspired to recreate the look at home - making it another effective channel to drive users to specific products on the website.

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email marketing

Email has proven a successful tool for Provincial’s digital marketing strategy, and one of the biggest return of investments for their business. Provincial needed a platform where they were able to release content frequently to keep customers up to date with the latest product releases and sales. In order to determine how to make the biggest return on each email, we worked closely with Provincial to refine the messaging of each campaign and deploy different layouts and tactics through multiple A/B testing, whilst integrating with analytics to determine success. The many years of reiterating and refining has resulted in an increase in sign-ups, opens, clicks, web traffic and web sales.

Activated via a cross channel approach

All the channels used to drive engagement and online sales for Provincial were designed to interact and inform each other. By using cross channel methodology we were able to leverage learnings from all channels to reduce costs and increase ROI

SEO

Google Adwords

Google Adwords support campaigns to drive new customers to the site using search ads, display ads and remarketing ads.

Google Analytics

Tightly integrated with Google analytics for live data insights, funnel and goal tracking, including customer designed dashboards and reports.

WEBSITE

Magento Integration

Built on one of the worlds most popular & flexible ecommerce platforms.

Readymag Integration

Integrated with readymag for increased user retention

Issuu Integration

Leveraging issuu platform to allow quick implementation of catalogues.

SOCIAL

Social Strategy

Activated across Facebook, Instagram & Pinterest to increase user reach and engagement.

EMAIL

Email Marketing

Engaging with customers directly in their inbox by using a mix of segmentation, A/B testing, trigger marketing and journey marketing to achieve the best results.

 

the outcome

This project was not a simple brief to launch and your done type of project. It has spanned 4 years of thought out development, iteration and adaptation. Changing and adapting with the changing needs of the business. With the goal of creating a long term sustainable revenue stream that was able to be maintained and managed with internal resources.

Phase 1 launch of Provincial's online store 1.0 and digital marketing strategy has been a success on all counts. Site metric have exceeded the initial goals set at the beginning of the project. But more importantly those site metrics have returned a substantial base level of sales and illustrated huge potential for growth.

Such as success has enabled Provincial to march forward confidently into Phase 2 of the project building on the knowledge gained during the phase, and well on the way to establishing themselves as a marketing leader in the digital marketing and eCommerce space as well as bricks and mortar.

Provincial Home Living - online sales results

"Provincial Home Living are glad to have a working partnership with WOOF Creative. They understand our brand, our vision and our direction. WOOF work flexibly and effortlessly with our constant deadlines and they are able to produce quality work in tight time frames. 

WOOF have additionally helped direct us to expand and profit with our online strategy. This in turn meant we exceeded our online budget. As a result with development help of WOOF, we feel confident and have increased our budget even further over the upcoming years.

Jade Pausewang

Managing Director

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