Greene King boosts bookings with Sitecore

Greene King’s websites are an essential element in the brand’s vision to 'make every customer feel like a regular and valued'. The brewery recognizes that the quality of the digital experience influences where potential customers choose to dine and drink. Every year, Greene King aims to convert millions of website visits into bookings and walk-in pub visits.

Previously, its existing websites were spread amongst 80 different web domains, which led to time-consuming manual management and costly upgrades when a platform reached end of life. This disparate approach also required digital teams to rebuild features for each website, which resulted in high costs and long lead times.

To meet ever-changing customer needs, Greene King wanted to establish a resilient, future-proof digital platform. The new web environment needed to support outstanding customer experiences, drive engagement, and boost conversion rates, while empowering marketing teams to efficiently deliver digital content that resonates with customers.

Greene King’s digital transformation involved migrating 1,704 websites from 80 disparate domains to a composable digital foundation built on Sitecore, in partnership with VML. The Sitecore solutions were selected for their alignment with Greene King’s IT strategy, which includes simplifying architecture, leveraging cloud services, and the ability to integrate with other systems.

Sitecore Experience Platform (XP) and Sitecore Experience Manager (XM) are hosted via Sitecore Managed Cloud and combined with Sitecore Content Hub DAM and Sitecore Content Hub Operations to provide an end-to-end platform that makes it easier for teams to find and reuse assets across every channel. Teams now have access to prebuilt features and components, eliminating the need to rebuild capabilities for each site and ensuring consistency with digital design guidelines.

The Sitecore solutions also integrate seamlessly with the tools needed to drive quality and maintain a best-in-class experience, such as automated testing and vulnerability identification. As part of the transformation, Greene King has established a continuous improvement team with standardized working practices across the full web development lifecycle, from architecture and developing to testing, release, and support.

Greene King now has the foundations it needs to rapidly build tailored websites that align with its branding, which will help the company achieve its digital ambitions and support business development projects. The website transformation has resulted in a 4% increase in website sessions and 0.6% increase in booking conversions, which will deliver an internal rate of return of 37% over five years. Greene King has improved the online user experience in multiple ways with its refresh. For example, sites are now optimized for mobile devices, which represent 70% of its users, while greater site speed and performance have boosted Google rankings.

The company has also enhanced accessibility for increased inclusivity, updated copy to streamline customer journeys, and made it easier for users to book a table. With Sitecore, the company can better understand customer behavior and conduct testing to enable continuous improvement. For example, the digital team identified that by increasing the prominence of the book button, it was able to enhance click-through to book by 23%. These capabilities combined with streamlined workflows help boost internal efficiency and cultivate a more collaborative way of working between IT, digital, and partner teams.