Lely offers the ability to consult with a human when dairy farmers have specific questions or need context and subject-matter depth. To facilitate Lely's growth ambitions easy-to-use digital interfaces are essential in combination with local and personal approach.The Digital Experience should not only facilitate Lely's growth ambitions but also help build the brand in a future-proof way, keeping personal relationship and empathy in mind.
Lely Building a future-proof customer experience to support a seamless interaction with the Lely brand.
For over 75 years, Lely has been a trusted partner to dairy farms in more than 50 countries, providing innovative solutions and tailored services that make farmers’ lives easier. From milking, cleaning, and feeding robots to energy solutions, Lely helps farmers improve efficiency, sustainability, and animal welfare. Their Farm Management services also provide tailored support to help farmers navigate their ever-changing landscape, addressing challenges such as shifting regulations, rising costs, and market fluctuations.
Future-proof in agriculture
The goal:
Strengthening the Lely brand (experience) and Lely’s global position as farming innovator with an improved customer experience aligned with the Lely CX program.
Heritage and Innovation
To create a future-proof brand, design decisions must be rooted in the company's heritage. For Lely, this means blending its rich agricultural history with a strong emphasis on technological innovation.
Heritage
To emphasize heritage, content was chosen that would display the context in which Lely's technology would operate: the farmers' life. Photography guidelines focus on environmental portraits showing farmers with livestock and Lely solutions, making the technology relatable to the target audience. Icons and technical drawings are styled classically to emphasize the brand's craftsmanship and heritage.
Innovation
The style for 3D renders (developed in collaboration with our 3D partner, 270 Degrees) and data visualizations highlights the innovation brand value, since this content aims to showcase Lely's technical capabilities. By using scrollytelling (storytelling on scroll) techniques, featuring 3D models on product detail pages, users are enabled to explore products and their features from various perspectives in an engaging way. Additionally, minimalist data visualizations effectively illustrate the product's impact, further reinforcing Lely's dedication to innovation.
Context, Content, Moment
A seamless customer experience revolves around three factors: the right content, in the correct context, at the right moment. This means that the design process focused on identifying the main steps in the customer journey, defining the information needed at each step, determining the preferred channels (online and offline) to deliver this information, and clarifying the role of the website in connecting visitors to the correct information and channel. Some key ingredients regarding context and timing include:
Local on a global scale
Farmers operate locally, while Lely is a large global organization. To make the company still relatable to them, individual country websites were created in addition to the main global Lely site. These regional sites highlight local Lely Centers and share stories of local farmers, providing a recognizable experience for the target audience.
Total solution provider repositioning
In addition to offering quality products, Lely provides consultancy services aimed at supporting farmers in maintaining resilience. Together with Lely, we differentiated the brand further by transforming it from being product-focused to being a total solution provider. This transformation was implemented on the website in two ways. Firstly, services were elevated to the same level as products in the main navigation. Secondly, on the product detail pages, the context of the products was highlighted by including links to Lely’s services and stories of farmers who have used those products.
Careers
The balance between heritage and innovation in Lely's career section is determined by the context. Lely competes with tech giants like Google and Microsoft to attract top talent essential for driving Lely's technical innovations. The emphasis on brand values varies depending on the role to align with diverse audience expectations. Data and tech positions highlight innovation through showcasing Lely’s technical products and efforts, while maintaining a sense of familial warmth to communicate the heritage. For roles closely connected to farmers, such as Experience Center employees, communication focuses on the farmers' lifestyle, which is a key attraction for this group.
Digital Platform
Together with the Lely team we created a user-friendly and future-proof Lely.com that generates more leads and invites farmers to become part of the Lely experience.
The website is developed with the following key pillars in mind:
- A seamless interaction with the Lely brand; with an integration between on- and offline
- A personalized experience for easier decision-making in a more convenient way
- Improved speed, flexibility, simplicity, clarity and ease of use to support the customer journey and increase conversion
- Support of IT requirements and content governance for global scalability
Next steps
Launching the new website is the first step in our partnership with Lely. Our collaboration continues, and plans are being made for phase two where we will help Lely with improving the CX of the other touchpoints in their ecosystem.
The Valley has translated Lely’s strategic objectives into a distinctive creative concept and UX strategy, forming the foundation for our global omnichannel CX strategy.
Charlotte de Grood, Lead digital and proposition management
