On sprints toward scalable, content-driven commerce with Contentful

Introduction

Imagine watching a professional athlete tape cut-up pieces of garden hose to the bottom of his sneakers before heading out on a run. Sounds insane, right? But, it actually happened — and was totally innovative, inspiring Swiss Ironman Champion Olivier Berhard to launch On in 2010. 

Since then, the company has been transforming the sporting goods industry with performance footwear and clothing that marry the latest technological advancements with sustainable design. Today, you can find everyone from professional athletes to dog walkers sporting a pair — you can even buy a share of On through the New York Stock Exchange.  Beyond selling premium footwear and apparel, On sells customers a lifestyle underlined by its mission: Ignite the human spirit through movement.

The earliest iterations of its ecommerce site satisfied the former (hitting sales) but missed the mark on the latter. “The site converted well. But it didn't feel on-brand with the storytelling that we want to do,” shared Kris Hedstrom, Head of UX/UI Design at On. 

Laura Mason, Head of Digital Product at On, shared a similar sentiment. “Our vision was to thread brand and editorial content into the commerce journeys to contextualize our products and allow customers to get to know and love our brand.”

“If you visit the run clubs hosted by some of our retail stores, the energy is so high. You can really feel the electricity behind the brand, and that has to translate into the digital experience,” Mason added. 

Achieving this at scale would require On to redesign its website and adopt a platform to help put content at the center of it. 

Taking the new platform for a test run

Influenced by the buzz on the benefits of headless technology, On’s developers decided to play around with Contentful’s Free plan in 2018. They wanted to see if it could alleviate key content management problems, which included disjointed technologies that prevented content from being reused across various areas of its digital experience and a disconnect between the brand’s product offerings and its well-read blog, OFF Stories. At the time, many blog readers were unaware that the content they loved was tied to a brand and product — a missed opportunity for the already successful, but growing, brand.

“At some point, you become limited by the systems in place. You get in this box that's very expensive to move out of from a time and resource perspective. What was promising with Contentful was that we could scale with it and really avoid that problem,” Mason said, hinting at Contentful’s extensibility. With the platform’s robust APIs and Marketplace, On could easily connect needed operational tools, such as its product inventory management system and ecommerce platform, with options to extend that stack at any time.  

After deciding to go all-in with the tool, On began an engagement with Contentful Professional Services to help refine and enhance its content models.

Hitting a new stride for scalable content operations

After carefully developing a sustainable content model and design system that would scale with On, and offer its teams both flexibility and increased agility, the company launched the redesigned site in January 2022. 

“Our old site lacked a design system. So, implementing that was a huge part of how we were able to quickly move forward with the redesign. For the first time in my career, the CMS isn’t a limiting factor,” Hedstrom said. 

“Today, we just have to make content updates once and they’ll show up in multiple spaces, which means we have more consistent messaging. We're also able to more quickly build up different destinations for customers. And ultimately, the quality of content is higher,” Mason added. In addition to continuing to produce blogs, the company has been able to turn out new content on its technology and sustainability initiatives as well as outfit “mood boards” that show customers how they might pair different products to create a cohesive, stylish look.

On’s newly realized speed to market has also helped the company launch effective campaigns at short notice. One example: The launch of “The Roger” collection — which unfolded rapidly during a well-known and widely broadcasted national tennis championship, solidifying On’s disruption of a second sport.

Passing the content baton to more teams

Content reuse isn’t the only thing speeding up content production for the company — the democratization of content creation and publishing is playing an equally important role and has allowed technical team members to shift their focus from manual content management tasks to skill-based projects. 

On’s Sales, Marketing, Copy, and Product teams all have access to the platform. And, after watching an onboarding recording created by Professional Services and On’s Engineering team, they’re well equipped to move through the interface. 

Thanks to this shift in roles and responsibilities, one project taking shape is On Code, which leverages an RFID chip within On’s shoes to track its sale, shipping location, and other information.

Hedstrom and Mason’s teams in particular have been able to experiment with optimizing various elements of the site to drive customer engagement. One of these experiments led the company to adopt yellow as the color for its navigation bar. While intended to be eye-catching, this design choice is also a nod to the company’s Swiss origins and indicators of alpine walking trails. They’ve also been able to streamline how they localize content — something that can be a big job when you support 40 countries and seven languages. 

Celebrating wins and gearing up for the next digital marathon

While On has already crossed the finish line with plenty of exciting digital projects, the company doesn’t plan to put away its running shoes anytime soon. Since onboarding Contentful, there’s been a decrease in bounce rate, an increase in customer engagement, and an increase in average time spent on the website. Today, over 40% of On’s sales are direct to consumer — which speaks to how eager customers are to engage with the brand directly. 

According to Mason and Hedstrom, personalization is on the horizon. On will also expand the rollout of its mobile app — first launched in the U.K. — to additional markets, offering customers an even more convenient way to access its latest products and content. With Contentful, most of the content within the app is referenced from what already exists on On’s website, reducing the time and resources needed to scale its omnichannel strategy. 

“At On, there's always a new idea that we can start to explore — it never feels super repetitive or you're kind of cycling over the same thing for too long,” Mason said.