Healing honey skincare, with the loyalty programme built into the platform
01 — The brief
A pioneering brand on a store that had aged
Apicare has been making natural skincare from its own hives since 1993 and was the first company in the world to put Mānuka honey into skin care. The old website no longer said any of that.
The store was tired and hard to move through, and it had two very different buyers to serve. Retail customers arrive looking for a specific problem to solve, dry hands, eczema, cracked lips, and need to find the right product quickly. Wholesale customers, from pharmacies to gift stores, buy at their own pricing and reorder regularly.
Apicare also wanted rewards that people would actually use. The scheme they had earned a point for every two dollars, only counted purchases made while logged in, and locked redemption until a customer reached a hundred points. Most shoppers never got there.
Rewards explained in three steps Shop and earn, create an account, redeem at checkout. Points are tracked against the email address, so a guest purchase still counts and links up the moment an account is created.
By the numbers
Thirty years of product, in one catalogue
Feature
The loyalty programme is not an app bolted onto the store. We built it inside the Oncord install, so points sit on the customer record in the same CRM that holds their orders, their email history and, for trade accounts, their pricing. Nothing to sync, nothing extra to subscribe to.
- One point earned per dollar spent, awarded automatically on every paid order
- Points tracked against the email address, so guest purchases still count
- Redeemed at checkout for up to 33% off, inside the normal payment step
- Balance and history visible in the customer account area
- Twelve month expiry, with reminder emails before points lapse
- No third party loyalty app, no monthly platform fee, no per transaction cut
One platform
Everything in one place, tied into the Oncord CRM
The pattern most stores end up with is a shop, a loyalty app, a trade portal and a mailing tool, four subscriptions that all hold a slightly different version of the same customer. Apicare runs the lot from one Oncord install on one contact database, so a customer's orders, points balance, trade pricing and email history are all the same record.
A native points programme with automatic earning, checkout redemption and a balance widget on the contact record in the admin.
One catalogue and one stock position. Retail customers see retail pricing, trade accounts log in and see theirs, with no second website to maintain.
An ingredient library, FAQs, the Apicare Buzz blog and a stockist locator, all client editable and all working for search.
02 — The process
How we got there
- 01
Auditing the old store
Products, categories, customers, order history and existing reward balances were mapped before design started, so nothing was lost in the move and long standing customers kept what they had earned.
- 02
Design led by the product
A calm, light interface built around Apicare's own photography, with the honey and hive palette carried through, so the products and the ingredient story do the selling.
- 03
Building the loyalty application
A points ledger against the Oncord contact record, earning on paid orders, tracking by email address, redemption as a payment method at checkout, and admin controls for rate, caps, exclusions and expiry.
- 04
Retail and wholesale in one catalogue
Trade accounts were set up as customer groups with their own pricing on login, so the same product pages serve a shopper buying one lip balm and a pharmacy reordering a carton.
- 05
Content, SEO and launch
The ingredient library, FAQs, reviews and stockist locator were built out, old URLs redirected, and the team handed a store they publish to themselves.
An ingredient library that earns its keep Sixty one hero ingredients, each with its own page explaining what it does for the skin. Useful for a shopper deciding between two creams, and a steady source of search traffic for terms no competitor is writing about.
03 — The outcome
A store that rewards repeat buyers on its own
A modern eCommerce site that finally reflects a brand thirty years in the making, with a rewards programme that runs without anyone touching it.
Points accumulate whether or not a customer remembers to log in, redemption happens in the checkout they already use, and the balance sits beside the order history in the CRM the Apicare team work in every day.
The same loyalty application is now a Fuel product, available to any Oncord store as Fuel Loyalty Rewards, with no third party platform and no per transaction fees.
Ready for a website like this?
Let's build the next one together
Design, build, content and search, handled by one Auckland team.
