Jenny Craig Australia's first-ever online store laid the foundation for an ecommerce subscription model
Previous platform
None
Industry
Food and beverage
Use case
Customization
Since 1983, Jenny Craig has been helping people live healthier and happier lives. The company’s formula for success is simple: provide customers with one-on-one support and delicious dietician-approved meals. With over 700 global stores, the Jenny Craig method has reached millions over nearly 40 years in business.
Usually, consultation services and meal purchases happened in stores. But to reach a younger market and provide more flexible options to members, Jenny Craig made the decision to expand its digital footprint in 2019. With Shopify Plus powering its debut online store, Jenny Craig has enjoyed:
- The smooth implementation of a fully customized, first-ever online store
- The complexity to allow members to build custom menus from more than 30 food items per week
- The foundation to offer subscriptions and automate recurring orders online
Challenge
Jenny Craig’s television commercials are widely renowned for sparking change in wellbeing, inspiring many to begin their own weight loss journeys. Getting started normally involved visiting a Jenny Craig store or reaching a consultant over the phone. The Jenny Craig website served to support these two calls to action.
But after noticing a high website bounce rate, Jenny Craig wished to be able to convert those customers where they were coming in. People who visited the website through digital ads did not necessarily want to call a number or visit a store. They wanted to start their journey online.
“We didn’t have an ecommerce solution that matched our in-store services,” says Akash Ahluwalia, managing director of Jenny Craig Australia and New Zealand. “We knew this was essential to attracting new customers to the business.”
With an impressive customer retention rate, Jenny Craig was sure customers would be loyal when they came through the digital door. The challenge was finding an ecommerce solution that would match the high level of service Jenny Craig offered in store.
Unlike many food delivery businesses, Jenny Craig is a membership-based program with over 50 custom menus available at any time. We needed a solution that could accommodate this complexity.
Akash AhluwaliaManaging Director, Jenny Craig Australia and New Zealand
Solution
Jenny Craig teamed up with Shopify Plus Agency Partner Overdose to help create its first-ever online store.
Shopify Plus was chosen above other ecommerce options because it could accommodate the complexity required by Jenny Craig. The company needed more than a drag-and-drop solution. The new website had to digitize the elements that made Jenny Craig a household name in the first place.
Members had to feel like they were getting a supportive, one-on-one, and fully customizable experience. This meant creating a menu planner that contained more than 30 food items per week that customers could then tailor to their needs. The Overdose team carefully mapped this out, ensuring the menu planner’s structure and data inputs worked with the Shopify Plus system.
The result is an immersive online experience. “When customers visit our website, they have the option to speak to a chatbot or take a quiz that emulates the questions that would be asked in a center,” says Alick Hyde, digital marketing lead at Jenny Craig Australia and New Zealand. “We use that information to generate specialized menus and meal plans for the week ahead that customers can tailor to suit them.”
Two integrations helped make the online store a standout for customers. First, Jenny Craig is fully integrated with HubSpot, which allows the marketing team to nurture customers and track activity with precision. Second, Jenny Craig is integrated with BeCool, a live shipping integration that allows customers to choose from a range of delivery days and times to ensure the best experience for receiving their meals.
Shopify Plus is very straightforward and user-friendly. It has proven—from a technical and customer point of view—to be great to use, logical, and customizable.
Alick HydeDigital Marketing Lead, Jenny Craig Australia and New Zealand
Results
While the Jenny Craig online store was being prepared, COVID-19 reared its head in 2020, making the creation of an online store more important than ever. As a result, Jenny Craig decided to speed up its launch by splitting it into two phases.
Phase one saw the online store go live. The launch was smooth, and results exceeded expectations. Jenny Craig saw an early conversion rate of 2.5% with no marketing efforts yet drawing attention to the new online store.
Phase two will introduce a subscription option so customers can automate recurring orders. It will also include the introduction of additional features like express checkouts that will improve the customer and back-end experience.
By opening its first online store with Shopify Plus, Jenny Craig has established a strong digital presence during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. The famed in-store Jenny Craig experience can now also be enjoyed online, allowing Jenny Craig to attract new customers, provide more flexibility to existing members, and establish a more resilient business model.
We know the Jenny Craig process works. With Shopify Plus, we’ve been able to successfully digitize it.
Akash Ahluwalia Managing Director, Jenny Craig Australia and New Zealand