Nature’s Bakery Hyvä Showcase

How Nature’s Bakery is making a difference, betting early on Hyvä technology

Adobe Commerce project snapshot

• Naturesbakery.com
• Founded in 2011, acquired by Mars Inc in 2020
• Country: USA
• Industry Vertical: Food, Consumer Packaged Goods, Healthy Snacks
• Business model: Manufacturer’s brand, Omnichannel, B2C, DTC

Hyvä project scope and key results

• New website launch with Hyvä:  July 2022
• Improved Customer Experience
  • Page speed up + 83%
• eCommerce funnel
  • Organic traffic + 11%
  • Conversion up 21%
  • Revenue up 33%

Methodology: Uplift calculated by comparing metrics between Calendar Year 2021 - June  2022 and  June  2022 to Sept 2023

Nature’s Bakery is an entrepreneurial brand with a mission to do good

The company was founded in 2011 to offer better-for-you soft-baked snack bars that are:

• Plant-based
• Gluten-free
• Dairy-free
• Nut-free
• With Non-GMO certified ingredients.

In 2020, the family-owned business became part of a larger family-owned business- Mars Inc- known for manufacturing and distributing globally recognisable brands such as M&Ms, Mars, Snickers, Wrigley or Pedigree pet food.

Nature’s Bakery is one of the fastest-growing brands at Mars and within its category. Today, their snack bars are sold in the USA and Canada through over 100,000 retail outlets including chains like Walmart, Target, Costco but also on Amazon and Nature’s Barkery’s own website.

The brand is about supporting a healthy lifestyle and being inclusive to all those who might have food preferences, intolerances, or allergies. According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, 20 million Americans suffered from food allergies in 2021, 16 million adults and 4 million children ¹.

You will find Nature’s Bakery on the field, giving back and getting involved in local communities.

The website, as the center of Nature’s Bakery's 360-degree brand experience

Unlike previous merchants that we’ve covered so far with our showcases, Nature’s Bakery is not a retailer. It is a manufacturer’s brand that mainly sells through a network of distributors whether they might be offline, online, or both.

Being an agile and nimble organisation is part of the company’s ADN, as such, a wise and pragmatic use of its marketing budget has been key to its financial success. Its key strategy is mainly focused on: 

• The use of its extensive retail footprint to drive brand awareness
• Prioritising lower funnel tactics to drive purchases
• Social media (140K followers on Instagram)
• Field marketing with events, tradeshows and sampling activities
• Direct marketing (SMS, emails) to drive in-store purchases.

The customer journey and path to purchase is never linear and goes back and forth between Online and Offline.  Although the brand’s website is far from being its main sales channel, it is the keystone of its Marketing and Communication strategy.

The website is the central place that offers the single source of truth and the latest information about:

• The product range: ingredients, nutritional information
• Updated list of point of sale and availability of products per store
• The brand's activation campaigns and community involvement
• The company, its values and governance

It’s also the only place that carries the complete range of Nature’s Bakery products.

As an eCommerce expert yourself, you might be surprised to see the “Shop on Amazon” button right on the Product Page! Why give away your retailer's margin if you already made all these efforts to bring consumers to your own website? That’s where Nature’s Bakery shows its consumer centricity and would rather meet the needs and preferences of its customers than make an extra buck.

The website is the Brand Hub that has a direct impact on the whole marketing funnel:

Awareness > Consideration > Conversion > Loyalty > Advocacy

It is where the brand can control its narrative and the experience it offers to its customers.  For that reason, it was the eCommerce team’s number one priority to deliver an outstanding consumer experience through website performance and speed.

Innovate with Hyvä on the existing Adobe Commerce store

Nature’s Bakery’s website became transactional in 2019 with the launch of a new Magento 2 build. The key reasons for choosing this technology stack were driven by:

• The need for maximum flexibility
• The breadth and depth of options and functionalities offered by the open marketplace spirit of the Magento Ecosystem
• The vast choice of innovative solutions coming from hundreds of thousands of Magento developers worldwide who meet the variety of needs of the most random merchants
• Access to knowledgeable developers who could provide informed decisions on which Magento extension provided the best quality, support and value

After the Adobe acquisition of Magento Inc, Nature’s Bakery looked at various options from going PWA and Headless frontend to even replatforming. After some thorough research, Hyvä popped on the radar with a proposition and a story that resonated with the eCommerce team. 

As Jonathan Bradbury put it:

 “Hyvä was built from scratch and innovated to provide a better alternative, closer to the core principles of Magento and its Open Source ecosystem. We felt it was a company like ourselves and decided to give it a shot”.

What was critical was that all the functionalities needed by the business could work with Hyvä. The research phase heavily focused on that, assessing what extensions and solutions were already compatible with Hyvä at the time, what was on the roadmap, and how much would vendors be prepared to help with that.

It clearly appeared that the technology didn’t need a steep learning curve and that the support offered by Hyvä and its Community was reliable, knowledgeable and very helpful, in line with the Magento spirit. That gave Nature’s Bakery’s team the confidence that it was the right decision.

Hyvä implementation and results for the DTC website

The evaluation of the technology and decision process took a month or two. Then the implementation of Hyvä frontend took 6 months with just one developer on the job. The project was managed by Wyatt Brunk, eCommerce Manager at Nature’s Bakery and the new website launched in July 2022.

Not only is the new site easier to maintain for the Developer, but it is also easier to make changes for the eCommerce manager. Throughout the whole project, the Hyvä Community was very helpful and brought all the support needed in the best way possible.

Immediately at launch, the website’s Core Web Vitals scores jumped from an average of 15 to 88 on desktop!! 

Page speed increased by 83%.

In line with the central function of the website, it is important to look at engagement metrics like time on site and average number of pages by visitor.

eCommerce metrics improvement were remarkable too:

• Organic traffic + 11%
• Conversion up 21%
• Revenue up 33%

Approach to Accessibility

Mars, Incorporated is committed to keeping our sites accessible to all visitors so it is convenient for everyone to navigate. They believe this allows all users to access our products and services. According to the World Health Organization, 15% of the global population has some form of disability. This means that a significant portion of Nature’s Bakery’s potential customers may have difficulty using our website if it is not accessible. Many accessibility features, such as larger fonts and high-contrast colors, can benefit all users, not just those with disabilities. 

Tips for other eCommerce merchants and brands

Wyatt recommends brands make sure they vet and look through all their integration partners to see to what extent they are compatible or willing to support the tech stack that brands choose. Nature’s Bakery was lucky to work with solid vendors like Subscribe Pro or Zinrelo (Omnichannel loyalty program) who are happy to be first movers in becoming Hyvä compatible and helped the team out ensure the best end-to-end experience possible.

¹Source: https://aafa.org/allergies/allergy-facts/