The BioMarkt Verbund is an association of around 500 independent organic markets and Denn's organic markets from Germany and Austria under the umbrella brand "BioMarkt". The aim of the association, which was founded in 2020, is to make the organic markets fit for the future while preserving their individuality and diversity.
After a successful migration to www.biomarkt.de, the client saw a:
During the pandemic, it became clear that online retail poses a risk to brick-and-mortar sales. Although e-commerce penetration in Germany is lower compared to other European countries, online grocery stores are growing rapidly. As part of our partnership, N3xtcoder helped biomarkt.de create and implement a digital roadmap for a competitive advantage.
The goal was to develop Denns-Biomarkt into a BioMarkt group with a digital world of experience that attracts and retains customers. Our team created a unified and enhanced website for partners and customers to improve communication and provide a 360-degree omnichannel customer experience. This required a solid technical foundation.
Together with the in-house technical team, N3xtcoder explored agile ways of working and developed digital and data-based business areas that promote sustainability in food and farming. SEO results were improved, and the design adapted for a more cohesive user experience while maintaining both biomarkt.de and denns-biomarkt.de portals for offers and promotions.
N3XTCODER is a partner with expertise in agile digital platform development who also sees collaboration as a value. Up until November 2021, we conceptualized, designed and developed the digital experience of biomarkt.de together. N3XTCODER quickly became a strong extension of our web development team at the retail alliance BioMarkt Verbund and helped us apply agile methodologies to our current and future projects.
Lukas Nossol
Head of Communications at BioMarkt Verbund
At N3xtcoder, we tailor our approach to meet each client’s unique needs, considering the project’s background and context. Our approach is to maximise the value delivered to each client while minimising waste, taking a lean, agile approach to Product Development. We follow established innovative business principles such as the smallest surprise, the magic number 7 (+/- 2), KISS, and "Don't Make Me Think."
Working with biomarkt.de, we began by creating a clear product roadmap based on the product lab. Our team then focused on delivering user-friendly results through agile sprints. We worked closely with the customer and established team to refine the product to meet their specific needs and expectations.
To standardize its digital presence, organic market.de needed to clean up its fragmented online presence, which had grown organically over the years with no clear roadmap. Our experience in website migration enabled us to identify and include non-functional and hidden requirements in the roadmap. Using in-house web crawlers, we developed precise redirection strategies to address the data jungle and opaque code and offer improved solutions.
In order to deliver the first quick results, we N3XTCODER filled the agile roles in the customer team internally: Product Owner, Scrum Master, Developer and Designer. This ensured a successful website launch and technical know-how transfer (see Fig. Phase 1). However, we wanted to make a lasting impact on our client's digital transformation. Hence, we shifted our focus to building up the IT team's capacities and technical and procedural skills through workshops, training, and pair-programming in agile sprints in Phase 2.
In the final phase, we switched to coaching mode, enabling the biomarkt.de team to run the website independently, saving the company time and money in the long run. With the team's improved know-how and sustainable agile approach, digital developments are happening rapidly while stakeholders remain in the picture (see Fig. Phase 3).
To keep up with the fast-changing digital trends and remain a major player in the organic sector, biomarkt.de needed a CMS tool that was not only cost and time-effective, but also allowed for future growth. TYPO3, a complex system requiring expensive local developers, was not cutting it. Thus, we switched to SANITY CMS, React JS, Gatsby, and nodeJS, which not only saved costs and time, but also allowed for easy integration with mobile apps, PoS platforms, or other UIs without changing the code. This shift has made biomarkt.de ready for the future and even SAP ready.
The biomarkt.de site was designed with a focus on its users, and the new engine allowed for the identification of the most important key features. Real user surveys were conducted from the start of the project to identify and evaluate their needs, resulting in the definition of valuable user stories. This approach ensured that the most important functions and interactions were optimized to meet the needs of the users, leading to the successful development of a digital product that delivers maximum value to its customers.
Our development process is grounded in a data-driven, approach combined with techniques from lean, agile and human-centred design. This means real traffic data and real user research to ensure that we are building products that really work for users.
Jonathan Moore
Co-Founder & CTO N3xtcoder
