Transforming healthcare: Top Farmacia's journey towards proximity and client-centric unified commerce.
Extending healthcare accessibility online
Top Farmacia (www.topfarmacia.it) is one of the largest para-pharmacy e-retailers in Italy. Founded in 2011, it has been acquired by Hippocrates Holding in 2021.
Hippocrates Holding, Italy's largest independent proximity healthcare platform, has been established in 2018 with the objective of transforming pharmacies from commoditized stores into the primary destination for customers' everyday healthcare needs. Their comprehensive approach includes a network of over 500 Lafarmacia pharmacies, providing highly skilled advice, facilitating check-up reservations, caregiving services, and offering a wide range of over the counter and prescription products. By acquiring Top Farmacia, Hippocrates Holding has complemented its brick-and-mortar efforts by extending healthcare accessibility online.
Reimagining the healthcare retail experience
In 2022, Top Farmacia embraced a digital transformation project, fueled by the need to face the changing market and the competition landscape; the para-pharmacy ecommerce market, that in its embryonal phase has been little more than a digital outlet for physical family-owned businesses, has now evolved into a modern and challenging ecosystem, scaled up by the participation of retail groups (such as Hippocrates Holding) and multi-national investors.
Digital strategy objectives
Top Farmacia’s digital strategy focused on two primary objectives:
- Enhancing customer experience
Improving the existing Top Farmacia website to provide a more elevated and user-friendly experience, transitioning customer service from a support role to an active sales enabler. - Provide a data-centric environment for business users
Technology shouldn’t ever be a bottleneck or a limit towards new marketing ideas or customer journeys, that must instead be powered by analytics insights to rollout new experimental activities on a daily basis. Flexibility is the keyword.
Top Farmacia's journey to seamless ecommerce integration
To achieve these goals, Top Farmacia adopted a composable technology stack for its brand-new website, focusing on the implementation of a core, site agnostic, platform to support current and future needs in terms of ecommerce. A complete re-platforming process was executed, where the to-be technology stack included:
- Commerce Layer — Transactional engine
- Contentful — CMS
- Algolia — Search
- Fabrick, PayPal, Postepay — Payment gateways
- Cognito — Identity provider
- Netlify, Akamai — CDN
The catalog, managed through integration with the national health agency data base, provided product details, descriptions, and media content. Stock availability and pricing were sourced from an internal ERP system. An API integration layer connected the Product Information Management (PIM) system to the CMS and Commerce Layer, synchronizing SKUs across both systems. In turn, the combination of content-related and transactional information provided the sources to index for the internal search engine.
Unlocking potential: promotions and customer service
Flexible promotions
The redesigned websites incorporated best practices in SEO and UX/UI, enabling customers to easily find information and engage with promotions. Promotions, a cornerstone of the pharmaceutical business, were optimized to enhance customer engagement and drive sales. Features include:
- Discounts, bundle offers, and exclusive deals, triggered by website registration or through above the line or exclusive and personalized customer journeys (via marketing automation tools), along with cross-channel advertising, with exclusive benefits for customers engaged via social media.
- Free gift offers, both based on spending tiers or in partnership with specific vendors.
- Upcoming: tiered pricing for multi-quantity purchases, subscription plans for select products with dynamic pricing based on quantity and purchase frequency.
To improve customer acquisition and retention, Top Farmacia introduced a dedicated landing page for promotions and coupons. Customers could access a comprehensive list of available offers, including personalized coupons and those linked to specific actions, such as account creation or newsletter subscriptions. This centralized platform streamlined customer interaction with promotional campaigns.
The role of customer service in revenue generation
Customer service played a pivotal role in supporting elderly clients and ensuring order finalization. The Top Farmacia team could create orders directly from their dashboard, applying discounts and completing shipping information for clients. They can also send clients a simplified link containing a complete order, requiring only payment details for completion thanks to Commerce Layer's Links functionality. This feature seamlessly integrates with the ERP, financial, and logistics systems, offering a comprehensive solution that benefits both customers and the company. By facilitating purchases to the final step, Top Farmacia provided exceptional support while boosting revenue streams.
Conclusion
Top Farmacia’s journey demonstrates the transformative power of reinventing the way an e-retail business interacts with its customers to create a unified, client-centric experience. By re-platforming their systems and leveraging a robust technology stack, Top Farmacia enhanced customer engagement, streamlined operations, and expanded its healthcare offerings across all digital channels. This comprehensive approach underscores its commitment to redefining digital healthcare in Italy, setting a new standard for customer-focused healthcare solutions.