Hay House is one of the fastest growing self-help publishers in the world, selling to more than 35 countries. Hay House offers products from some of the field’s top authors and thought leaders in digital and print formats. On Magento 1, they had grown to five web properties: three Hay House sites with unique currencies, tax rules, and pricing, as well as an Online Learning site and SuzeOrman.com. Hay House realized that their previous agency didn’t have enough Magento 2 experience to successfully handle migrations. Given our expertise in supporting complex multi-site architectures and our vast knowledge of CX best practices, they chose Corra to migrate to Magento Enterprise 2.2 with a completely redesigned experience.
Customer Experience
With both digital and physical product offerings, Hay House’s main challenge was to create a unified customer experience regardless of the items being purchased (physical books, online videos, live streams, audio downloads, webinars, etc.)
Due to the many permutations of their products, mapping the customer journey was a complex endeavor. For example, the same products are often available in both digital and physical format, and a single product detail page needs to accommodate the various requirements of each format. Customers could theoretically purchase any number of physical products (as long as that quantity is in stock) but they are only allowed to purchase one product in digital format to avoid mass-duplication after download. Moreover, in certain instances, files aren’t downloaded but instead accessible from the My Account page. To solve these complexities, the Corra team formulated a sophisticated UX flow with multivariate customizations and messaging strategies that guide users through the process and clearly encourage them to take specific actions. From a visual standpoint, the new design provides a consistent look and feel across the entire experience. Corra also unveiled a crisp new homepage designed to put a wider variety of Hay House’s catalog of products on display with carousels for visitors to click through.
Custom Account Flow
Due to the fact that many of Hay House’s digital products are only accessible from the account page, the publishing house wanted their customers to easily retrieve purchased content. Corra built a customized flow to automatically create a new account every time new customers submit an order, allowing them to download, audio stream, video stream, and read content with ease. Corra also developed a custom module allowing customers to access their account during the checkout process, regardless of the site they are on (Hay House US, Suzie Orman, Hay House University, etc.). Now, if customers check out as guests, Magento is automatically recognizing if there is an account associated with their email address, thus prompting them to sign in.
Integrations
Each of these sites has a different integration with Wyomind Advanced Inventory via flat files for warehouse management and fulfillment. Hay House has physical warehouses operated by Penguin Random House (distributor) in the US, UK, and AU to support the different fulfillment processes for each site and region. As many SKUs are shared across all sites, this extension allows the Hay House team to set up a unique warehouse for each site and manage the level of inventory independently, even when SKUs are shared.
Hay House’s membership features were rebuilt in Magento 2 using Annex Cloud to boost customer retention through programs that reward their loyal customers with discounts, free shipping, content, events and more. Corra built a custom module allowing Hay House to segment different groups on Magento and to send this customer data to Annex Cloud via an API call. Shoppers can now be targeted with personalized offers and campaigns displayed in their account page depending on the customer group they are in.
Corra also integrated Stripe Payments, Bluefoot, Magenest (event passes), Paypal, Elastic Search, Avalara, Zendesk and Amasty for shipping.
Hay House’s previous sites were built on Magento 1 and hindered by various bugs. Corra reviewed the code and found that there were functionalities tied to two different modules. The Hay House architecture is comprised of many extensions and properties across different locals. They came to Corra with the goal of migrating to Magento Enterprise 2.2 with an effective and scalable system to support the complexities of their business model, but also to support the Hay House World Summits, some of the world’s largest online health and wellness events.
The Corra team improved the site administration for Hay House. Each of their sites were provided independent integrations with Wyomind’s Advanced Inventory extension for warehouse management and fulfillment. This allowed the Hay House team to set up a unique warehouse for each site and manage the level of inventory independently, even when SKUs are shared on more than one site.
Corra updated the Hay House overall shopping experience to allow customers frictionless transactions and better guide them through the checkout process. And the new system architecture on Magento 2 provides Hay House a foundation for new growth.
