Kesko

K Group partnered with Reaktor to provide their grocery customers with one online presence, K-Ruoka.fi, and to create a new media platform that provides a personal channel for customers to carry in their pockets anywhere they go.

The user experience sets a new industry standard. Using machine learning and AI algorithms, the service recommends products, recipes, and food types, based on the user’s purchase history in brick and mortar stores and online. Modern and agile content marketing, made possible by a new CMS, guarantees that the visitor stays not only for the food but also the best-in-class content.

At the beginning of our development process, Kesko’s online presence was divided between five different websites: recipes, online store, and content situated at K–Ruoka.fi, and each of Kesko’s four store chains had their own site. The focus was shifted from the organization’s needs to serve better those of the customers’. 

The remade customer path takes the visitor directly from inspiration to buying and finally cooking delicious food. Thanks to the rigorous consulting of customers and store owners, both old and young, the customers’ journey online is now easier than ever.

Marrying up Kesko’s online store with K-Ruoka’s mouth-watering content makes the journey inspirational throughout: Our solution integrates the content in a way that a visitor can, for example, easily jump from offers, ideas, and articles to ordering food. 

Since K-Retailers (store owners) are the heart and soul of Kesko’s business, it needs to be reflected on the website, too. Consolidating K-Retailers’ presence online strengthened Kesko’s already iconic brand, while store owners were given their well-earned place in every nook and cranny of the new K-Ruoka.fi.

Browsing through over 20,000 items or hundreds of recipes in an online store can become an insurmountable task. To save Kesko’s customers’ precious time and give them impeccable recommendations, Kesko’s services are now boosted with a healthy dose of AI-powered algorithms.

Implementing machine learning in K-Ruoka.fi enables us to learn about users’ and similar users’ preferences by looking at their purchases in brick and mortar and online stores. This allows us to learn and relearn what the customer truly appreciates. The service can also auto-generate shopping lists, recipes, and food type recommendations based on the user’s choices. 

Kesko has a long tradition of best-in-class content marketing, both offline and online. Keeping the top position in Finland after the project was of utmost importance. To come out top, Kesko’s digital marketing was built around easing people’s everyday lives via personal and intuitive service. 

The new content strategy is based on a firm understanding of how people arrive at the site and use it. The strategy is backed up by Kesko’s precise customer data and five identified customer groups with differing media usage and preferences.

To execute the new content strategy, a modern CMS suitable for agile, multi-channel content marketing was necessary. Contentful was chosen because it’s flexible and enables simultaneous entries to both the website and the K-Ruoka application. The systems in place don’t only run smoother; they also allow selling directly from content and filling the shopping cart straight from recipes.

In the end, content is as good as it’s relevant to the reader. Creating recommendations manually is very laborious, so AI is now being used for such a menial task. And importantly, machine learning also supports each customer’s individual goals – whether those are related to sustainability, domesticity, or health.

• UX and visual design
• Full-stack development
• Overhaul of CMS to fully support modern, multi-channel content production
• Integration to critical 3rd party systems (online payment, delivery, POS, product information management)
• AI-driven algorithms for recommendation service
• Introduction of a custom-built order management system (OMS)
• Growth Engineering and growth team building
• DevOps
• Continuous deployment