Driving Tech Innovation in Retail with Domino’s Pizza, Co-op and New Look

For those of you that couldn’t make it in person or wish to remind yourself of our line-up of retail leaders, take a read below to get to know some of the best innovation tips and technology showcases here. 

We were welcomed by Apadmi’s Chief Strategy Officer Marcus Hadfield who commented: “We don’t just see traffic from mobile, we see users. After the past year, the growth in the amount of time spent in shopping apps has skyrocketed, with over half of most brand’s sales being made in an app.”

He continued: “Mobile app revenue is predicted to hit 100billion in 2024 – which is why we’re so excited about creating technology that supports mobile, integrates with existing systems and uses data to drive ideas and innovation.”

Over to our panelists…

Bringing the local shopping experience online with Phil O’Hagan, Product Lead at New Look.

Phil is a seasoned product expert with experience across the retail, travel, financial services and B2B landscape. His role at New Look incorporates a heavy focus on customer needs and their instore and online experience and he is currently driving digital growth with the launch of their brand new app.

Here at New Look, our recent focus has been on modernising our technological and digital offering to enhance our instore and online experience for customers across our 450 stores in the UK. As part of this strategy, we’ve worked closely with the teams on the ground in our stores to pair the marketing strategies and experiences they provide, with the digital experience in the app. 

When working to fuse the instore and online experiences, we took various trips out to our retails stores to get to grips with what our teams are doing, this included a trip to Porth’s New Look. Here the teams offer a unique experience for their customer base resulting in a far greater digital participation than the average store. We spent time with the Porth team to learn more about their secret ingredients to driving sales – we found that lots of their customers don’t want to shop on the website or the app but will happily look at clothes on the community facebook group, so the team used their social media profiles to post in the group, sharing latest trends, new products and top deals. For me, Porth emphasises a functional brick and mortar retail experience, which integrates modern digital strategies, to drive store footfall and increase sales. 

What’s also important for me is culture. Here at New Look we have a really talented, enthusiastic team, but when you throw a pandemic and compulsory working from home into the mix, it becomes that bit harder to maintain an easygoing working culture, with a determined focus on innovation. So we switched up the way we did things, integrating new processes and finding new ways to motivate our employees. We made sure our teams were healthy along the way, with weekly wellness and happiness reviews from the internal HR team to ensure that the blurring lines between home and work weren’t affecting anyone’s health and wellbeing. 

Likewise, on the technical side of things, we made sure to remember that complexity was in our problems – not our solution. One of our goals was to create in-app stories. And whilst we could have created a million-pound system for this, instead, we partnered with a small Turkish startup who could help us do it on a more cost-effective scale, with suitable testing. We saw people returning to the app, interacting with it and our goals were met. 

My final piece of advice is: Don’t be afraid to fail, but make sure you communicate when you do.

Co-op’s checklist for a brilliant mobile app with Adam Warburton, Chief

Adam prides himself on being fascinated by technology and has an unreasonable desire to understand how things work. He has led the Co-op‘s mobile app team through the design, build and development phases of the app, all the way to becoming the leading membership platform it is today.

Product Officer and Anne-Louise Charlton, at the Co-op.

Anne-Louise joined the Co-op App team in a move across from a marketing & communications managerial role, where she specialised in content strategy & brand

development. Before the Co-op she worked at the BBC for over 10 years, as a project manager on the design of their campus at MediaCityUK from concept to completion, and also as a Senior Broadcast Journalist, heading up a new website team & presenting & producing radio programmes.

Back when the team decided to delve into the app market, we wanted to be up there with other leading supermarket retailers and offer an app to our customers and in the Co-op’s case, members. We worked with Apadmi to build a number of prototypes and iterations, at first testing the solution on Co-op colleagues. However, uptake was minimal, performance wasn’t great and we had a 3% retention rate. 

Naturally, we went back to the drawing board, which brought a period of relentless innovation and determination, which is what brought the Co-op app to life. We now have 2 million downloads, a discover section, recipes, personalised deals and the app functions as a digital card so customers need not to worry about bringing their card when shopping. 

Here’s the secrets behind what we’ve done…

Domino’s Pizza: A case study in eCommerce innovation with Kelly O’Connor, Mobile App Product Owner at Domino’s Pizza UK and Ireland.

Kelly has been at the forefront of the digital transformation project for the Domino’s Pizza App – their biggest Pizza ordering channel. She is set to lift the lid on agile digital transformation off the back of the app’s successful redesign, build and launch this year.

Back when we started the work for the new Domino’s app in 2020, we were sitting at our kitchen tables, because of lockdown. The app was live by June this year, and has now sold millions of pizzas, and that’s something we’re incredibly proud of. 

After choosing Apadmi to build our app, we first took them around to different parts of the business to really understand how the business works. Understanding the complexity and how hard the people in our franchises work is incredibly important for the entire process. Our in-store teams are really amazing, so one of my key takeaways today will be to really understand how they work and to know your business as much as possible. 

Another thing to make a point of is how this app wasn’t just a product of the technical team, it really was the efforts of every department – it was even supported by a huge marketing campaign with out of home advertising as well. 

The next takeaway point I have is to really assess the skills you have available in your team and if you have the right skills to achieve what you want. Working in a multidisciplinary team is great, and it requires everyone to know exactly what their role is, so a skills gap will become clear very quickly. 

And finally, get some headspace. It’s important to not let little details get to you – take a step back, look at everything you’ve achieved and be sure to get enough sleep. 

Here’s the full story behind the Domino’s app: 

Here at Apadmi we’re recognised for our history in mobile, but over the last few years we’ve really extended that. Our renewed focus covers technology that moves. We explore this by creating digital experiences with the power to shift markets. We create best-in-class, fully compliant digital technology and enriching experiences for people on the move, developed by our expanse of knowledgeable, technical teams here at Apadmi. If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you, please get in touch with a member of our team today.