Buckle up, we are getting ready to take off 

The journey of our collaboration has been one of a kind and we still have many more milestones ahead of us. Borealis L.A.T with the headquarters in Vienna, Austria is one of the major European market leaders of producing and supplying crop nutrition products serving farmers and retailers in 19 countries across Europe, on the highest industry standards. 

In January 2018, we embarked on a multi-year long partnership to change the Borealis L.A.T digital identity and help them realise their vision of making a future-proof digital mark in the fertilizer industry.

Ain’t no mountain high enough - The challenge

The company, as a leader in the European fertilizer business needed an improved strategy and identity with updated technological solutions.

On the other hand, we assigned for creating a digital product which had to be engaging and appealing for farmers from 19 different countries who generally spend their time away from the wwws and .coms of the world. 

Thirdly, the current content management system had a rigid structure not able to organize translations and automatization which was reflected in the website’s lack of personality, with a very low level of user engagement. 

Understanding the driving engine

Our marketing and digital CX specialists team has travelled about 5000 km, involving 8 site-visits to get to know in-depth the Borealis L.A.T customer base in order to create a comprehensive customer experience mapping. Alongside, we conducted an international market research survey with the purpose of defining most accurately the user personas. Well-defined farmer and reseller personas enabled us to efficiently identify, communicate and comply with the company’s user needs. Knowing precisely the audience, helped us refine the features, visual and functional elements of the Borealis L.A.T website which was utmost important in creating the overall added value.

Appearances that matter digital identity and visual content creation

We needed to turn the tide and show the world the hidden beauty and clear benefits of crop nutritions. We addressed this based on our research thus we have created a connected UX strategy focusing on the touchpoints at which the different user types come into contact with the brand, seeing our product less as a standalone experience, but part of a wider network of experiences. For making it shiny, our UI design team had created a new digital identity with an entirely renewed icon library, engaging design elements and a unique visual style guide. 

Care and appreciation for nature, human engagement were the elements which could complete the precise and factual offers of the brand. That is why we upgraded the visual content of the  website by creating a fresh and vivid photo and video library consisting of more than 1000 new images by setting up  6 seasonal shootings, following the evolution of nature throughout the year. 

What is under the hood? cognitive studio Digital Experience Platform

A while back we have transformed the old ways of content management by creating our in-house DXP.

So we have taken as a basis our DXP and tailor-made it complying with the Borealis L.A.T needs: with custom modules, able to uphold 19 different countries with multilingual contents,  crops that are country dependent and different fertilizer products spectre available in specific countries.  

User friendly content creation and management, connectivity to external translation agencies are such features that Cognitive Studio is capable to uphold. A future-proof content management tool with appealing layout and flexible structure serves the editors in the most self-explanatory way.

Thus we implemented the Cognitive Studio with personalized functionalities with 8 levels of admin and editor types. Due to its modular built and scalability, Cognitive Studio facilitates the cross-country organizational structure of the company and handles the high complexity of the country-crop-nutrition combinations.

Ready, steady, go! bringing the brand to life

The launch of the rebranded website and its new identity was strategically created to have the biggest impact in the digital space of agronomic industry, so we raised the bar high.

The implementation of the launch strategy consisted of building 2 dedicated landing pages hyper personalized for 6 different countries, 10 custom video ads, on 5 targeted channels with more than 2000 digital banner ads.

The company’s philosophy of supporting farmers with the best quality fertilizer products enhanced by its online tool, NutriGuide offering personalized recommendations to grow efficiently were the basis of the strategy.

During the launch period, in partnership with Borealis L.A.T we brought to life step by step one of the most complex digital product.

During the launch campaigns we managed to overachieve our initial KPIs. We reached 137% of the initial target number of farmers and resellers in 6 countries through the revamped digital identity and new online farming tool in the first month. Then in only 4 months we engaged already 9% of our 5 year target in only 19 countries.

Numbers:

• 19 countries - 1st launch
• More than 300.000 lines of code
• 28.5 - the CC and Borealis L.A.T teams’ average age
• 5 nationalities within the core team
• 1000+ - emotional pictures taken
• 2000+ - web banner ads
• 571 - graphs
• 180 - working days
  

Holding onto each others

The journey has not yet come to an end. Along the way we had our laughs, our moments of truth and we can say that our partnership and mutual appreciation for each other is still growing having the same goal: reaching for the stars and never stopping there. The enormous workload of content creation by the Borealis L.A.T team, the obstacles we’ve overcome during the building and creation process and the high complexity of challenges had made us a great team and better human beings.

Stats of January 2019 compared to January 2018 show already significant improvements:

• Returning visitor rate increased by 30%
• Bounce rate decreased by 20%
• Average duration per session increased by 74%
• Pages per session increased by 74%