Project background
Skinny Mobile is a New Zealand based prepay mobile provider. Skinny is a challenger brand focused on growth, last year alone over 158,000 new customers joined them. Skinny aim to give Kiwis more of what they want for less. In a nutshell, Skinny’s whole reason for being is to strip everything back, so customers only pay for stuff they actually want. It’s based on a model called common sense. As such Skinny is always looking for ways to reduce costs and improve value for their customers.
Project challenges
Skinny Mobile does not own any brick-and-mortar stores, which makes their website a crucial business asset providing a competitive edge in the fast-moving telco market. Skinny Mobile needed a smarter digital experience that would also deliver a simple and clear experience without all the confusion of existing industry websites. In order for Skinny to continually evolve content without substantial investment, the redesign also included a move to the intuitive Silverstripe CMS.
Project scope
The Skinny website interacts with many external systems to provide the control a user needs to manage their account, get support, and purchase phones/SIMs/add-ons/combos. The primary interaction of the website is with the Skinny Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) software that manages mobile accounts and usage. Silverstripe took care of the ‘heavy lifting’ involved with integrating key existing systems including: Mobile Virtual Network Operator Platform, Oracle RightNow, Ingram Micro logistics, and Amazon S3. Silverstripe CMS is also integrated with and relies heavily on Skinny’s payment gateway provider, a forum and support system, and the order fulfillment system. Each has their own APIs and are tightly integrated with the website’s core function.
We implemented the Shop, Shop Discount, and Stock Management modules to allow Skinny to sell a range of phones and give customers promotional coupons for various deals and discounts. All of this is manageable by Skinny staff through the CMS without the need for Skinny staff to write a single line of code. This also allows them to manage the stock levels of each product in their shop to ensure no customer is left disappointed.
During this redevelopment the way the site was hosted and managed was also reviewed. The previous site ran on an onsite hosted solution that was not easy to change, even for simple copy updates. Skinny needed to control the day to day updates with the back end support to protect their critical business channel and ensure their customers would always have a positive experience online.
To get the best performance, they chose a managed platform engineered and optimised specifically for Silverstripe CMS. Silverstripe Cloud offered a robust and reliable hosting solution that elastically matches visitor traffic on-demand. This means that Skinny’s site isn’t slowed by peaks in traffic and they only pay for what is used.
With the auto-scaling feature, Skinny’s marketing team can confidently run tactical promotions without any concerns about the site running slowly or crashing. Skinny were able to leverage Silverstripe Cloud’s technical experts who tailored the infrastructure set up to best optimise the system configuration.
As part of Silverstripe Cloud, Skinny also benefits from an expert support team that knows Silverstripe's open source software inside and out. This team constantly monitors Skinny’s site and responds to issues. The dedicated Silverstripe Cloud team is alerted by automatic monitoring, and operate 24/7 to prescribed service levels.
Without regular upgrades, Skinny staff would also miss out on new features as the software is improved. Skinny decided to add Code Care to their Silverstripe Cloud. This additional service takes care of Silverstripe software upgrades and bug fixes for their custom code. Skinny can be confident that their important business channel will be kept up-to-date, secure, and protected by Silverstripe Cloud.
Given our site is built on Silverstripe CMS software, it made sense to trust the company behind it to run and protect our site too. Using AWS cloud hosting and Silverstripe Cloud management helps us get the best performance out of our Silverstripe site.
Nick Fitt
Skinny Online Systems Support Manager
Key outcomes
Silverstripe delivered a full-service solution that included an intuitive content management system, website development services, and managed cloud hosting. The new site is already delivering on the key goals to deliver better sales, improved self-service tools, and reduced customer service management. Since launch, Skinny has observed an increase in customers using the website for regular purchases. Overall credit card top-ups are on the increase with the number of customers setting up Auto Top-Ups having already grown substantially by 53%.
Services provided
- Workshops
- Discovery
- Wireframing
- UX & design
- Front and back end web development
- Dedicated testing resource
- Ongoing UX & UI discussions
- Project Management
- Solution Architect consultation
- Programme Management
- Account Management
- Managed cloud hosting
- 24/7 New Zealand-based support
Work with us
Whether you’re looking for a project partner who can help you realise your epic digital vision, or you need a hand with your website, we can help.