USN - Ultimate Sports Nutrition
The leading UK selling sports nutrition developed by world leading scientific research to help consumers reach the ultimate in fitness levels and at the same time enjoy the benefits of a healthy lifestyle.
Targeting high value customer profiles, Tang helped to increase the USN brand awareness in the UK, support a growth in online sales of over 70% and provide savings to the ongoing Sci-MX Sports Nutrition marketing budget of over £100K.
To increase annual revenue within the existing budget, marketing activity was concentrated on higher volume consumption users serious about their training rather than the wider spread of lower volume consumption users that are lifestyle motivated.
Advertising was improved in key publications to increase the USN brand awareness and the client provided with their own comprehensive self managed ecommerce website.
Visual Audit of competitors and USN advertising in leading printed publications to support analysis of market positioning, brand messaging and comparable propositions. In the field account handlers and industry consultants helped profile target customers and gain further insight into consumer preferences, attitudes, and behaviours.
To achieve the marketing ambitions a detailed plan for the year was forecasted with a comprehensive production schedule, critical milestones, relevant measurement points and campaign budgets.
Tang immediately designed and developed advertising templates for monthly printed publications that could accommodate different subject personalities and a tone of voice that would appeal to each of the magazine reader profiles.
The market had matured away from pages of product catalogue listings and the advertising needed to have high impact and be instantly recognisable to the USN brand.
Roll over each of the thumbnails to view the magazine adverts
The existing website needed redesigning, enhanced functionality and a more friendly user experience. Tang initiated a thorough process of design cycles to finalise a screen design that re-enforced the advertising brand language and would appeal to the target consumer. Developing systems and cross selling opportunities for the ecommerce that would maximise sales from visiting traffic. The navigation was simplified, content collated into a logical structure and page interaction driven by product strengths and consumer benefits.
With an extensive range of products and high value training/sports advice Tang designed a website in keeping with other marketing activity and focussed navigation paths onto the consumer needs and relevant products. The website having over 450 pages the website needed a synchronised mirror development site for the entire period of production was needed to automatically adjust to the regularly changing content and products.
To support the high volume of operators to be trained and the frequent high volume of content changes the website was build on a cost easy-to-use content management system that could manage different account permissions. The system also permitted easy management of meta descriptions to support search engine optimisation synchronised with both ongoing campaigns and long term organic objectives.
Roll over each of the thumbnails to view the website screens
Our approach was to implement an out of the box system developed and tested across a vast spectrum of ecommerce experience that would reduce the production cycle and then to enhance specific areas of functionality through bespoke programming.
The buyer experience was improved with simplified product paths, the least possible clicks to purchase and faster paths to purchase for registered users with pre-populated customer information.
The ecommerce system was refined and tailored to the existing internal philosophy and operations within the business to ensure continuity of fulfilment and customer accounts processes. Being both robust and versatile to accommodate over 6,000 sales per year of over 115 products with over 200 options.
Roll over each of the thumbnails to view the website screens
To avoid irritating drop down menus on top navigation rollover a complete site navigation was developed on the left side of the website. This showed all the key topics and products to navigate to from a single list.
This was developed to be a single source of useful tools visible on all the website pages that helped to search the website for keyword terms, sign-up to receive the USN newsletter and special offers as well as manage your customer account.
From the toolbox you can search the website under specified keyword terms of value to display in particular relevant products with images and details including the pricing.
From the toolbox you can signup to receive the USN newsletter and regular promotional discounts and offers.
From the toolbox you can manage your customer account, requesting or changing passwords, addresses, payment and delivery details.
As with global leading online shops of the time, Tang developed a shopping basket summary box that was visible on all the website pages that displayed products, spend totals and money saved through volume discounts and product combinations and promotions.
Volume discounts could be managed within the ecommerce system and in this instance were set to buy 3 products to save 20% and buy 4 products to save 25% to dynamically show dynamic volume savings. Single instances of products and free gifts could be exempt, product combinations discounts excluded, and special offers not included in the total calculations. The system also added dynamic prompting messages to the shopping widget to entice additional product purchase.
These sets can be managed by combining existing products that references the source variants such as price, description and weight to calculate and display a dynamic total for all the products and then in turn displays a total saving for the package (in line with and exclusive of further volume discounts).
Price threshold tiers could be managed to groups of free gifts. The price threshold triggered within the payment check out page and continued to show in the shopping basket widget on continued browsing. Free gifts are removed from payment checkout page and shopping basket widget if products are removed that reduce total below required threshold.
On the payment check out page useful products such as drinks shakers could be associated to products such as energy drink powders and be suggested to the buyer if they had not already added one to their basket. This was only suggested to the buyer once so if returning to the check out page it did not irritate the buyer. It was also remove from the basket if added by suggestion and when all associated products were removed.
Promotional products can be set to any product variant within the system to help incite new customers and push through date sensitive stock. This could be added as a teaser or even leading image on the homepage as well as have its own dedicated promotional website page. These products can be exclude within the system to avoid offering additional volume discount and also synchronised to product combinations. The offer can be manage to 'while stocks last' or to an expiry date.
On any page within the website, cross selling teasers could be added to capture sales against areas of interest and already familiar products.
To support internal software knowledge for an existing but expired back office system, Tang re-engineered an exact copy of the system to support operational transition to the new internal server Sage system and act as system backup.
To avoid any third party payment gateways a direct payment API (application programming interface) was developed that interfaced directly with the clients HSBC trade account for immediate payments into account and satisfied all criteria to ensure the HSBC ePayments guarantee.
To support an extensive internal server Sage system, Tang engaged a Sage partner consultant to develop an online API (application programming interface) to synchronise all online sales and reporting. This in conjunction with the sales management system ensured continued operation on any instant of Sage system failure.
All UK sales team received extensive onsite training, bespoke training manuals and online knowledge base support. Ongoing support was established as part of an annual maintenance agreement.
The system was demonstrated and then training given in the UK at the Tang offices to the South Africa sales team as part of an international roll out for the UK self managed ecommerce system.
To ensure a smooth and seamless switch over from the existing to the new website keyword density of page were matched or improved as well as http 404 redirects in place for redundant content and products pages.
Email marketing software was added to the system to manage auto responders for newsletter signups, order confirmations, order status updates, automatic user accounts and re-cart emails to follow up incomplete orders.
Seasonal communications are a very effective method with extremely high response rates to raise your brand awareness and re-enforce supplier to customer loyalty.
Tang developed a running theme to be illustrated by humorous illustrators that were posted as traditional printed cards and supporting emails. Again giving the client the independence to manage their own ongoing marketing communications.
Roll over each of the thumbnails to view the Christmas card
The shareholders for USN UK distribution broke away to deliver improved sports nutrition and support more UK sports personalities under the new brand of Sci-MX Sports Nutrition.
The ongoing cost savings to both printed publication advertising and online sales over the next 3 years helped redirect marketing budgets into extending existing and developing new customer channels.
