Horseware Ireland

Horseware Ireland is the world’s leading equestrian brand in horse rugs and equine products, with nearly 40 years of history, over 400 employees, selling to over 70 countries worldwide.

Horseware Ireland specializes in high-quality, high-performance, and durable equipment. With products sold both in physical stores and their own site, it’s critical for them to have a digital presence that matches the quality of their goods. They turned to Kontent.ai partner Marino Software to help them create a premium digital experience for their brand.

Transforming the digital experience

Previously, Horseware Ireland relied on a catalog-style site to display their products. While functional, the site failed to reflect the upscale nature of the brand. It also posed challenges for their team when customizing the look and feel of content.

Horseware Ireland chose Marino Software as their partner for transforming their digital presence. Together, they created a new vision for the site that is immersive, elevated, and centered around enhancing the customer experience.

Building a modern tech stack

To support this new modern experience, Horseware Ireland needed to change the way they managed content. They adopted a new tech stack with Kontent.ai as a core component. Marino Software then assisted with creating new content models for the Horseware Ireland team to use in Kontent.ai.

As a headless CMS, Kontent.ai gives Horseware Ireland complete freedom over how their content is displayed across channels. At the same time, marketers and content creators get a user-friendly, intuitive authoring experience while working in Kontent.ai. 

A seamless journey for customers and employees

With a new tech stack in place, Horseware Ireland's website has been completely transformed to provide a premium, upscale experience for their customers. The team can now effortlessly create, edit, and publish content using Kontent.ai, including managing multilingual content. They also utilize collections in Kontent.ai to create boundaries for different regional content while keeping all content within a single Kontent.ai project.

Margaret Thornton, eCommerce (Digital) Manager at Horseware Ireland, said, “Marino Software and Kontent.ai enabled us to create an unparalleled premium digital experience, seamlessly blending e-commerce and brand identity to connect with our consumers. The combined efforts of our agency partners and chosen platforms resulted in a crisp, clean, and scalable website that empowers our team to curate bespoke engaging equestrian digital experiences and offers our customers a fully customizable and immersive journey. 

The team at Marino Software helped us realise our dream of creating this digital sanctuary where riders find not only exceptional products but also a community that shares their love for all things equestrian. The team in Marino supported us throughout the entire journey, from ideation to discovery right through to final testing, execution and launch to ensure that the website delivered upon its goals.”

By transitioning to Kontent.ai with the help of Marino Software, the Horseware Ireland team now has more independence when it comes to working with their content­–and that translates to an improved customer experience.

Recent success and business impact

Since the successful launch, Horseware Ireland has been closely monitoring the performance and impact of their new digital experience. The results have been impressive, showcasing significant improvements across various metrics.

Here are the key success metrics and business impacts evaluated by Horseware Ireland:

• 171% increase in session time: Customers are spending more time engaging with the content and exploring the site.
• Over 400% increase in interactions on the homepage: Enhanced homepage design and content have led to higher user engagement.
• 10 minutes to publish job postings: Streamlined content management processes allow for rapid updates.
• 30 minutes to publish blog posts (including translations): Efficient content workflows ensure timely delivery of multilingual content.
• 85% average month-on-month increase in e-commerce revenue: The new digital experience has significantly boosted online sales.
• 25% increase in conversion rate over the initial six months: Improved user experience has led to higher conversion rates.

These metrics highlight the substantial business impact and success that Horseware Ireland has achieved with their new digital presence, reinforcing the value of their collaboration with Kontent.ai.