healthylife.
Laying a foundation of excellence with best-of-breed tools.
healthylife is a digital startup supported by the Australian Woolworths Group. They provide customers with high-quality content, products, and services related to a healthy lifestyle. At Kontent Horizons 2021, Chief Product and Technology Officer Stefan Schmidt and Luminary Chief Technology Officer Andy Thompson discussed how they successfully launched the platform in record time. This is how they did it.
by Luminary
Challenges
- Timeline to launch a new platform was ambitious
- Many independent systems needed to come together on time
- Solution had to be flexible enough to handle future needs
Solutions
- A headless architecture empowers editors and developers to focus on their work
- Cloud-first software solutions enable scalability
- Choosing the right partners allows for unbeatable time-to-market
Results
- Launched a new platform on time and with full functionality
- Seamlessly integrated Kontent.ai with other best-of-breed tools
- Supported business needs with a future-proof headless architecture
healthylife launched a new platform for health-related products, content, and services in record time by leveraging the right partners and the right tools. Here’s how they created an excellent customer experience that’s ready to evolve with their business.
Preparing to launch a new platform
healthylife started with an ambitious plan, and wanted to get up and running as fast as possible. The goal? To launch a new platform for healthy living in just five months.
They envisioned a platform consisting of three pillars: a hub of content focused on healthy lifestyles, an e-shop full of great products, and a booking platform for services like massage, yoga, fitness classes, and more. But they also wanted their platform to be flexible enough to change and grow in the future.
They wanted to find a way to support their vision with an architecture that fit their agile mindset, with the flexibility to cover new use cases in the future. The platform they were building would have to integrate multiple functionalities, including ERP capabilities, search, logistics and supply management, customer data management, and more.
Having a user-friendly solution was also a key consideration. They were launching the platform with the help of experienced partners, but when they transitioned the product to an in-house team, they needed the tools to be easy to use.
Deciding to go headless
healthylife has decided to go with a cloud-first architecture, with headless and serverless components where available. This setup allows them to select best-of-breed tools for each of their platform’s components, while maintaining the flexibility they need to grow and adapt in the future. Cloud-based solutions also give them the advantage of scalability when needed, since they don’t have to rely on their own hardware’s ability to scale up with their growth.
Stefan Schmidt explains the benefits of a headless architecture.
Some of the platforms in their technology stack include Kontent.ai as their modular content platform, Shopify Plus as a headless commerce solution, and Algolia for search and discovery. Luminary, a Kontent.ai partner, helped with UX, UI, and infrastructure support.
Headless technology allows healthylife teams to work independently, which means the initial site content creation happened at the same time as site development. Kontent.ai allowed healthylife to focus on building the front end they wanted from the very start, without worrying about whether it would integrate with a traditional CMS.
Going live and preparing for the future
Through a combination of smart architecture solutions, dedicated partners and employees, and best-of-breed tools, healthylife launched their new platform on time and at full scale. Their new site went live with hundreds of articles and services, thousands of products, a loyalty program that served millions of customers, and zero down time.
Their choice of headless tools also makes it easy to make adjustments on the fly, without needing to rebuild their whole platform. Their teams can develop new ideas and deploy them quickly with the help of the modular approach offered by headless components.
Looking towards the future, healthylife is excited by the opportunities offered by their modern tech stack. Options such as a mobile app or changing the development language on the frontend will be simpler endeavors, since headless architecture enables fast prototyping and iterating on new ideas.
healthylife shows how it’s possible to bring a great product to customers in a short timeframe. It’s all about being supported by the right teams, strategy, and tools. Watch the full talk from healthylife and Luminary, "Bringing a new business online for healthylife in record time" from Kontent Horizons 2021.
“A headless architecture gives us two main benefits: a clear separation of concerns, that allows content managers to focus on data, rather than on presentation, and the flexibility to replace different front-end technologies as they come, without having to replace the actual components in the architecture. Finally, there’s a chance we can integrate a mobile app in the future, without having to make any major changes to our setup. ”
Stefan Schmidt, Chief Product and Technology Officer, healthylife
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