Ace Google Cloud Platform & App • Building Insights Across the Customer Journey

Ace Hardware is the world’s largest hardware and retail cooperative, with more than 5,300 independently owned and operated stores in over 70 countries. As a fixture in communities all over the United States and around the world, Ace Hardware is affectionately known as “The Helpful Place” and prides itself on superior customer service. But to better deliver the hardware, advice and expertise that people need to improve their homes, Ace Hardware’s digital presence needed some refurbishing of its own—including the build of an entirely new mobile app platform.

Retail digitalization trends have accelerated at a breakneck pace and today’s customers expect a seamless, omni-channel experience. They may start product exploration minutes, hours, or days before a digital or in-store purchase, switching between app, web, and devices as they do. While Ace Hardware had an existing web analytics setup and webview app in its toolbox, these properties didn’t speak to one another—obscuring important first-party data and leading to inefficient analysis of data. To bring these signals together, we helped Ace Hardware connect its web and app analytics for a full picture of the customer journey—while improving the experience through a completely new mobile app, built from the ground up.

With constantly evolving digital transformation comes an increased scrutiny on privacy. Marketers can offer more meaningful personalization if there is a fair value exchange for customers. That’s why a foundational step to our approach was to reimagine Ace Hardware’s loyalty program by building a rewards app user experience that continually earns customers’ loyalty by engaging their expectations, emotions and behaviors.

Keeping in mind Ace Hardware’s customer engagement KPIs focused on loyalty and rewards, we mapped out data collection points that would allow the business to measure and optimize to meet aggressive short-term goals, while also strategically collecting data like home type and home characteristics to allow for highly accurate personalization and relevance for the customer down the line—while helping customers gain rewards and information they need. 

Furthermore, we designed the analytics framework to capture location, demographic and purchase data in addition to loyalty and engagement data from the outset, creating a future-proofed app analytics setup that would eliminate the need for costly and time-consuming app rebuilds as business needs shift.

We tackled Ace Hardware’s analytics framework and mobile app with a lockstep approach to development. This joined together front- and back-end processes—which are typically siloed—to result in an experience that captures data critical to enhancing the customer experience. Integrated teams worked together to design the app with customer interaction framework, data collection points, and analytics built in from the start, producing the highest-quality output more quickly and efficiently.

Working with Media.Monks for both production and analytics streamlined communication, accelerated project timelines and culminated in a more cohesive final product and better customer experience. The app immediately generated results, too, and within seven months of launch: