Moonpig delivers on customer promise with agile mobile app

Moonpig is all about celebrating heartfelt moments — you know, big birthdays, new arrivals, surprise engagements and the just becauses. They’re proud to play a role in connecting people with those they care about most.

With their ever-growing range of cards, thoughtful gifts and bright, beautiful bouquets, Moonpig offers anything and everything to celebrate special occasions. Combine their diverse offerings with top-notch tech and an app full of fun features, and customers are armed with the opportunity to send cards and gifts from the palm of their hand, no matter where they, or the recipient, are located.

There are few companies with an ecommerce platform offering the breadth, depth and customization of products that Moonpig does — something that the pandemic made strikingly clear. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Moonpig not only reinforced its position as the leader in their industry but managed to pull away from the competition. Contentful gave Moonpig the framework and support necessary for their developers and content creators to focus on the most important thing — providing great customer experiences. 

Throughout the pandemic, Moonpig allowed friends and family in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia to share sentiments when social distancing and lockdowns made in-person celebrations or purchasing cards from brick and mortar stores impossible. Contentful fueled Moonpig’s success by enabling them to quickly update and tailor their sites with messaging that matched the ever-changing situation.

Time and headspace to customize

Whoever came up with the saying “no news is good news” might have been thinking about Moonpig’s experience with Contentful. With their previous CMS, team members often reported site errors, broken code and requests for content changes. Today, they are quiet, and for a good reason. Moonpig’s Contentful users have the autonomy to change and update what’s necessary within a timeframe that was previously unthinkable. For the 100 individuals on Moonpig’s tech team, this was — and still is — something to celebrate.

The moment these processes sped up, thanks to automated workflows and an automated Content Management API, Moonpig developers turned their attention to improving overall customer experiences. Projects focused on personalization, which had been on the agenda for months, could begin taking shape. The outcome of these efforts resulted in the launch of Moonpig Group Cards and the Card Editor, which customers can use to tailor purchases to recipients.

Developers weren’t the only ones who benefited from the switch to a headless, API-first CMS — editors did as well. Content creators enjoyed newfound benefits of Contentful's streamlined interface. They could quickly input and update content on their own with the confidence that the change they made would update across all platforms within seconds. This was especially for establishing clear messaging regarding delayed delivery times during the pandemic.

Designing more than greeting cards

During his first few months with Moonpig, James Huppler, head of product, recalls there were extensive capability gaps in the tools they had to make their product vision a success. “A lot of what we wanted to do, and what our customers were asking us to do, required upfront development before we could prove that the change improved customer experiences,” James shared.

James and the Moonpig team didn’t want to commit to a CMS without testing it first. They didn’t want to expend time and resources if, in the end, Contentful did not meet their expectations or help them deliver better customer experiences at pace. Contentful’s sandbox environment was a huge attraction for Moonpig — it allowed their team to build, test and have confidence that Contentful met Moonpig’s requirements. 

Moonpig engineers started by using Contentful’s extensive documentation, SDKs and consistent APIs. “Our engineers got a lot more confidence when they had used the sandbox — they could play around with things and then go ‘yup, that’s it,’” added James. 

Agile updates for every platform

“The unique thing about Moonpig is that we’re not item-driven, we’re occasion-driven,” said James. “Customers come to us with an occasion and recipient in mind and our job is to help them celebrate that thoughtfully and effortlessly — this is opposite of most commerce journeys, which are item driven”. This means that the Moonpig product managers and designers strive to build highly-personalized, targeted experiences based on upcoming occasions customers might celebrate.

Moonpig’s targeted content is powered by Contentful’s web app editor. Updates are not siloed to Moonpig’s website, but instead, extend to its mobile app. With Contentful, Moonpig had the opportunity to create and maintain a consistent experience across its website and app. 

This app has been well received by customers, making it a top app for iOS and Android during the last year. Its on-the-go interface means customers can easily send a card and gift when they are out. They can feel confident they’re sending something personal that cannot be found through a traditional offline retailer. James says the number of sales that occur through the app today is now “considerably higher” compared to two years ago. 

With Contentful’s platform, Moonpig hopes to tackle another company goal: globalization. By using Contentful’s dependable global content delivery networks and extensive App Framework, Moonpig is sure to attract new, diversified and loyal customers in the future, bringing on-demand greeting cards to more countries.