Subway is a complex organisation in that as a franchise business and a national brand, it has both Business to Business and Business to Consumer marketing objectives and a high level of responsibility to its franchisees with respect to both driving consumers in store and using franchisees marketing contributions responsibly and effectively.
In mid 2008 the Subway site contained a great deal of B2B information, but there was little there for the consumer. Moreover, it had grown organically over time and was no longer intuitive to navigate or use.
We were tasked by the National Marketing team at Subway, to redesign and redevelop the brand website to make it more appealing to consumers and more effective in terms of converting franchisee or property prospects into bona fide enquiries.
As Subway is a complex, multi-stakeholder organisation, it was important that we conducted a broad consultancy process, to ensure buy-in to the solution from all quarters. This consisted of several workshops with the client and regular status presentations at national Board level, to control the development of a detailed Information Architecture and set of user interface schematics.
Creatively, we developed a clean look and feel that more closely represented the values of the Subway brand and that could evolve as the site grows over time. We also created clearly delineated areas on the home page for key window promotions, secondary promotions (including games and virals) and B2B content.
A key technical challenge was the integration of our technology with pre-existing legacy systems that hold franchise and store information and are the target repository for enquiries generated via the site.
Store finder powered using webservices
suite of web services were developed that allowed our ASP.NET code to talk to these systems in a seamless manner, ensuring that store information presented via store finder functionality at the front-end of the site is up to date and all B2B enquiries are correctly routed.
Moreover, we developed creative for an third party online ordering system (aligned with the overall site look and feel) which has been incorporated into the site, for a trial in Subway's Carlton region. Later this year, a third party loyalty card system will also be integrated into the site.
Both of these systems have been developed by two different technical agencies for Subway in New Zealand, but integration has been made seamless by an architecture that was designed to be flexible over time.
This is an excellent example of web as platform, where a central site is integrated with an array of different external systems and so supports consumer marketing as well as business to business enquiries from potential franchisees and property owners.
The site receives over 125,000 unique visitors per month and all key indicators such as dwell time, average page views, depth of visit, etc. have risen since the site was relaunched, with a significant drop in bounce rates due to an improved navigational structure and interface.
The redesigned look and feel and underlying content management system has also allowed us to launch a number of tactical promotions via the site quickly and at reduced cost to the client.