Staples Canada’s new content platform expands its mission — and sales

Staples Canada, formerly part of the US-based Staples Inc., is an independent, privately-owned retailer that has expanded beyond office supplies to a range of business solutions, including co-working and hosting events, and is the largest retailer of office supplies and business solutions in Canada.

Staples.ca, the team behind Staples Canada’s website, needed a content platform that was flexible enough to publish new information instantly and agile enough to publish to all areas of the website — not just the ecommerce site. The site’s Working & Learning blog also needed a boost in discoverability, but Contentful helped turn all of that around.

Staples Canada teamed up with Contentful in mid-2019 as part of a complete overhaul of its digital platform, beginning with a more robust ecommerce solution than was available within Shopify. 

“We knew we could not launch Shopify without a powerful CMS,” said Jeff Serota, Staples Canada’s senior director for product management. “We needed to be able to edit individual content pieces and schedule content for future publishing.”

The perfect CMS had to be able to handle all types of content, from banners to rich media. It also had to enable publishing to all parts of the website, not just the ecommerce site.

Staples.ca’s old platform refreshed once per day, which limited the business in critical ways. “With Contentful, we’ve gone from taking an extra day — or two — to launch a new product to being able to launch right away — like after a partner tells us about a new product,” Jeff said. “If they launch at 1:00 p.m., we can have our own promotion live at 1:05. That’s better for our customers and better for our partners. It’s an absolute game-changer for us.” 

Increased traffic from Black Friday midnight launch results in a new, fresh Cyber Monday campaign

The ability to launch at midnight led to the company’s busiest Black Friday ever. Company leadership then revamped their Cyber Monday campaign. With just two days’ notice, the team made new banners, new content and new URLs, and had it ready for launch at midnight on Sunday — all thanks to Contentful. 

“Contentful allowed us to turn around a completely different promotion in just two days — and that weekend was a very busy, hectic weekend, one of the busiest of the entire year. It was a real win to be able to turn on a dime and do it better. Our customers were expecting something good on Monday, and we had it for them,” pointed out Jeff.

An ecommerce platform built on Contentful supports growth strategy and localization while focusing on the customer 

The new ecommerce platform is built on a stack of best-in-class technologies purpose-built for individual functions. This setup supports the company’s growth strategy. Contentful is the content engine powering the entire ecommerce stack, from desktop and mobile to the blog.

Translations are performed in-house instead of using automated translation technology, for accuracy in its website for both English and French. “Other technology has difficulty with that,” said Jeff. “They expect you to have two different setups, one for each language. With Contentful, it’s just a toggle on each piece of content to make sure it’s available in English and French, and it’s done.”

New fast and flexible content platform delights employees 

All of these integrations between technologies are seamless for both site visitors and the Staples Canada teams. “I have a single place where all this content is being offered,” Jeff says. “I don’t have to train people on a bunch of different tools to figure it all out. It all gets done in one place.”

Now that Contentful is part of their everyday work, team members are delighted with it. “We’ve absolutely changed their lives,” confesses Jeff. “It’s a single tool, it’s fast and it’s flexible. It lets them do what they need it to do. They no longer have weird constraints they don't understand. They’re unbelievably happy.”

Better customer experience, higher traffic and tapping into new markets with a digital-first approach

Staples.ca is now a seamless, satisfying experience for customers. They can find the products, services or advice they need quickly, and it all reflects the Staples Canada brand.

Staples.ca’s Working and Learning blog is also an important element in promoting the company’s expanded mission — rather than just acting as a direct sales tool, it provides Canadian small businesses with steps on how to register their company, set up a website and find government support during the pandemic. Recently added content includes tips and advice for teaching remotely or supporting children’s at-home learning.

But before Contentful, the blog had scarcely any traffic. “Nobody went to it because nobody knew where it was,” said Jeff. “Now we get lots of blog traffic because it’s all directly tied into the site.”

Changes at Staples’ physical stores, like the addition of co-working spaces and events hosting, are also moving to digital, thanks to Contentful. “We have experts giving art classes, or business lessons such as how to network in this new world, how to start a business, how to set up an ecommerce site,” Jeff states. “We’re helping people adapt and learn to run their businesses in this new world we all live in.”