When Cicis embarked on a total rebrand, they concentrated first on retooling the offering and then launching a new brand identity. The company updated everything from the logo — officially changing its name to Cicis: Beyond Pizza — to the website and store concept design.
"When I started at Cicis, mobile made up 60-65% of our visitors, but the website needed help," states Kwong. "It wasn't responsive and had our old logo so was a big piece of the rebranding focus for us. There was lots of discussion going into it, not just on the look and feel, but also on ensuring everything be crawlable, easy to find, and that it incorporates enough unique and decent content."
For Kwong, content is a top priority. "Up until this point in my career, I've been concerned with using content to drive ecommerce. Now, in my current position here, the idea is to give customers content they can share on social. Give them content that their friends are sharing — good content that they are finding online. Make our brand more top of mind, so that when they do make a dining decision, they think of us."
All the same, Kwong also knows that the company's website is not where customers will make their ultimate decision. "They will go to Google and type 'directions to Cicis', which means our brand information in Google has to be right," he says. "During the rebrand, we discovered lots of issues with false and misleading information about our brand across the entire web — even basic names, addresses, and phone numbers were inconsistent. Hours were wrong. Locations were marked as open that were actually closed, and people would have driven 45 minutes to learn that. It was quite an uphill battle when we first got started."
