Community

Baking Mad

An immersive digital baking utopia for The Silver Spoon Company

Please note for the avoidance of confusion that this case study refers to the legacy Baking Mad Kentico ecommerce solution for The Silver Spoon Company and is not reflective of the current live website, which transitioned in February 2021.

The Silver Spoon Company is part of Associated British Foods, a diversified international food, ingredients and retail group. Their portfolio of brands are leaders in the categories that they operate in and include Billington’s unrefined cane sugars, Allinson flours, and Nielsen-Massey vanillas and flavours. The team appointed Ridgeway to craft and evolve the Baking Mad website as part of a long-term partnership. Silver Spoon were looking for a secure website that put users first, with fully integrated engaging content and ecommerce capability.

The team at Ridgeway are a pleasure to work with. They understood our business and what we wanted to achieve instantly and they were able to add value and insight every step of the way. Senior eCommerce and Digital Manager

The subtle sell

The recipe platform is a unique brand experience as it does not directly sell the products of the brands behind it. Instead, the site sets out to bring together a community of people who have one thing in common – a love of baking. By creating this digital utopia for bakers of all levels, Silver Spoon can subtly build a loyal brand following and sell through the desire to bake with only the best ingredients.

The site also helps people to become better and more experienced bakers with tips and techniques, this offers not only engaging content but also aims to promote a higher frequency of baking amongst its community which in turn leads to the need to purchase more ingredients.

An immersive experience

Baking Mad wanted an immersive digital experience where bakers could indulge and explore their passion with rich content including recipes, tips and insights for bakers with varying levels of experience. The aim of the website is to bring people together, creating a strong community of baking lovers. The website needed to be intuitive and easy to use with strong search functionality and features to make the art of baking an enjoyable and stress-free pastime.

Fast search

The website needed sophisticated search functionality so users can find the recipes and content they want quickly and easily. Ridgeway used the Kentico Document Event Handler to integrate with Microsoft Azure Search. This enables information to pass from four data types -

products, recipes, articles and baking tips. When any changes are made to any one of these data sets Azure is updated in real time. The Microsoft Azure Search functionality returns results incredibly fast with accuracy which provides a better user experience.

Baking made easy

Our UX team worked with Baking Mad to identify key personas and compelling user journeys to create intuitive navigation and a website that bakers love to browse and bake from. Some key features and functionality include a print option, the user can decide which parts of the recipe to print, for example, key info, the image, the ingredients, the utensils or method. The website features a ‘bake mode’ for those wishing to follow a recipe online. This feature displays the recipes in easy to follow steps using a simple to read large font. The users can easily scroll through each step of the recipe. Users can even select the ‘keep screen on’ feature which means the users tablet or mobile does not go into sleep mode half way through a bake.

Shop, deliver, bake

The Baking Mad website is integrated with IFS Logistics, their consignment provider. When a purchase is made it is tracked and a notification is sent to IFS who then collect the parcel and deliver it to the buyer. Proof of delivery is then sent back and used to update the order status in their Kentico solution.

I am delighted with what we have achieved so far and I look forward to continuing to work with Ridgeway on future projects. Ridgeway are an agency that you can trust to deliver. Senior eCommerce and Digital Manager

Results

Baking by numbers

In the four-month period after launch compared to the previous period we have seen the following:

19%

Increase in pageviews
14%

Increase in sessions
12%

Increase in tablet traffic

The result is a safe and secure website built on Kentico which brings together a community of bakers through engaging content which raises awareness of both the Baking Mad and partner products. The website also provides a platform for Baking Mad to effectively sell their newly launched products.

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