What's new at Loblaw Digital

Joe Fresh x Helios: GWP

08.17.2023

A new custom front-end UI has launched on Joe Fresh, helping to streamline the customer experience of qualifying for and selecting a free gift with purchase (GWP). The new promotion type was designed on our Helios platform for adaptability across different lines of businesses. The feature will also enable the Joe Fresh marketing team to run GWP promotions multiple times per year simultaneously in-store and online for a consistent omnichannel experience.

PCX: GOATOTE

05.29.2023

A new bagless pickup options for PC Express customers is being piloted in Real Atlantic Superstore locations. In partnership with GOATOTE, the pilot program provides another option for PC Express customers to avoid single-use plastics by packaging their groceries in reusable bags. Additional packaging options give customers more flexibility and convenience while empowering them to follow municipal and federal single-use plastic guidelines.

Online Prescription Management: Simplified Sign-Up

05.29.2023

In an effort to make it easier for patients to manage their prescriptions online, we launched a simplified sign-up feature that makes it easy for patients to create their Online Prescription Management Platform account. To sign up, patients will receive a unique link from their local store that prompts two basic security questions. Once answered, patients will have easy access to their medication records. This enhancement provides patients with a new level of convenience, while maintaining trust and security of sensitive health data.

PCO: Challenge Offers

05.18.2023

As a way to drive more frequent digital engagement, we launched Challenge Offers, a new multi-week offer type and gamified customer experience. PC Optimumᵀᴹ members are rewarded for completing multiple offers, which are personalized based on customers’ shopping and/or app usage behaviours, within a specific period to earn additional bonus points. We’ve developed four types of offers to encourage digital engagement ie. through focusing on loading, loading and shopping, shopping and scanning their app, or specific transactional requirements. These challenges offer flexibility to the customer to complete the challenges during the time of the offer.

Marketplace: Mini App

05.17.2023

A new checkout experience has launched for the Marketplace mini app in the PC Optimumᵀᴹ super app. The new experience makes it easier for customers to select their shipping address, shipping options, payment method and place their order.

PCO: Load to Card

04.15.2023

Load to card has launched, enabling deal-conscious customers to earn PC Optimumᵀᴹ points back on purchases they make within the Loblaw ecosystem. The feature enables vendors to create microsites to target offer experiences to their audience. Members can browse offers that may be of interest to them and load offers to the PC Optimumᵀᴹ app. The feature also allows for members to be deep-linked to a microsite from an email, blog post, social media, or QR code scan in-store to view the microsite and load offers.

Shoppers Foundation for Women's Health

04.15.2023

Our Digital Experience team launched a new website for the Shoppers Foundation for Women’s Health, in close partnership with Solvers and the Shoppers Drug Mart Community Investment team. Built efficiently on Contentful and leveraging Raisin, a new donation platform, the site allows Canadians to make donations and learn more about Shoppers Drug Mart Foundation and its fundraising programs. Eligible registered Canadian charities can also apply for funding through the website.

Joe Fresh: National View of Inventory

03.13.2023

The assortment of articles and the amount of inventory displayed on JoeFresh.com is now fully powered by our Ship From Store network. Previously, our inventory and online assortment was controlled by what was available in our eCommerce Distribution Centre.The new national view provides internal business users with stock filters to control what’s available online via configurable stock rules. This update brought ~900 styles and 3,000 articles not previously available in the eCommerce Distribution Centre online and available to be purchased. Moving away from the eCommerce Distribution Centre to our Ship From Store network will help lower the overall cost of fulfilment and further optimize order orchestration by ensuring orders are sent from as close to the customer as possible.

PCX: Go Green

03.06.2023

Our Reusable Box Swap Program is live across Market stores in Ontario, Atlantic Canada, Manitoba, BC, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. The program allows PC Expressᵀᴹ customers to notify us if they are bringing their own bags for pickup or if they want to participate in the swap program by swapping or buying PC Green Boxes. The program standardizes different conscious packing options and also streamlines the colleague experience during the picking, staging, and loading process. The impact to the internal colleague experience required API changes and changes to our BFF layer on the back-end so that order data could seamlessly flow from the moment a customer checks out to our Hybris management console and then to our fulfillment order domain.This ensures the Picking App and Ops Portal call the Order Domain to determine what packaging options to display for each order, technical design/architecture considerations that help ensure a customer’s packaging selection on the Picking App matches the information displayed on Order Dashboard.

PCX: Bifrost Orchestrator

03.06.2023

The first twelve PC Expressᵀᴹ stores to leverage Bifrost Orchestrator and DoorDash direct integration have gone live. Bifrost is an in-house orchestration system that’s designed to orchestrate delivery orders in a vendor-agnostic way. The system enables faster integration and last mile delivery partner onboarding, which ultimately helps to increase the delivery capacity for PC Expressᵀᴹ. By moving DoorDash delivery stores to Bifrost and off of a third-party orchestration system, we're able to manage our own orchestration logic which can be adjusted based on volume or cost between multiple last mile delivery partners.

Retail Media Platform: Self-Serve

02.13.2023

Self-serve sponsored search is now available in MediaAisleᵀᴹ for Loblaw Mediaᵀᴹ customers. MediaAisle Sponsored Productsᵀᴹ enables advertisers to take direct control of their sponsored search campaigns and drive consideration when customers are actively searching for relevant products in Loblaw’s grocery eCommerce platforms. This offers users flexibility and insights to plan and optimize their search campaigns. Features include suggested keywords, direct search and complimentary search algorithms, built-in forecasting tool, suggested bids and bid multipliers, near real-time performance reporting of media metrics, sales, and return-on-ad spend.

Helios: Server-Driven User Interface

02.13.2023

In February, we launched our second release of the SDUI-backed PCX home page. Twenty-four total components were created by the Helios team, covering six themes including action/input and content modules. Moving forward, we’ve created a UX resource in Figma that can speak directly to engineering frameworks in Github so that iterations on designs can be translated directly to code. This is the next phase of maturity for our front-end experiences – we’ll be able to build more efficiently and consistently.

Helios: PC ID

02.13.2023

PCᵀᴹ identification is a universal login that can be used to access your accounts across a variety of Loblaw and Shoppers Drug Mart websites. New device login notification emails went live on Feb 7. This new security feature sends an alert to customers whenever there is a login from a new device detected, allowing customers to monitor activity on their account. In the event of malicious activity, customers are able to change their passwords and enable multi-factor authentication.

PCO: App Upgrade

02.06.2023

We released v. 4.9.9 of the PC Optimumᵀᴹ app this week for iOS and Android. The upgrade includes an offer load indicator in the Offers page that directly communicates when all offers are loaded with a checkmark and animation. This will help address customer feedback on the loading mechanism and the value that PC Optimumᵀᴹ provides its users. The upgrade also includes an improved convergence experience on the dashboard page for the PC Financial^® convergence tile found on the Dashboard screen. Existing PC Financial^® customers who have the app installed will be directed to the app with one tap. Existing PC Financial^® customers who don't have the app installed will be directed to the mobile web experience. New or unlinked customers will be taken to an acquisition landing page to complete the signup process.

Flowers by Fortinos

02.06.2023

Our Digital Experience team launched a brand-new web experience for the floral division of Fortinos. Customers are now able to see an online catalogue of floral arrangements on offer and order by phone for local pick up or delivery. The site was built on Contentful, leveraging existing components where available to increase efficiency and velocity.

PCX: App & Web Refresh

11.15.2022

Rollout has begun on the PC Expressᵀᴹ home page experience for both web and mobile. This was done in under two months using brand new Server Driven UI (SDUI) architecture which will allow us to ship more frequently, and with greater efficiency and flexibility. The refresh will inspire customer to discover exciting new products and shop the brands they love. The new home page better meets the core missions of our customers while presenting them with industry leading shopping experience and modern look and feel.

PCXRD: Mini App

11.15.2022

We launched the PC Expressᵀᴹ Rapid Delivery mini app to PC Optimumᵀᴹ customers on December 12. This allows customers in applicable geographic areas to place orders through the PC Optimumᵀᴹ app. The launch is an important step on our journey to building a more integrated digital ecosystem as it exposes PC Optimumᵀᴹ customers, who may not be aware, to the Rapid experience.

PCX: Growth Push Notifications

11.15.2022

Push notifications went live in the PC Expressᵀᴹ app on December 8. While it’s not the first time we've sent mass push to our customer base, it is the first time we've been able to send targeted marketing communications via push at scale. This unlocks opportunities for personalization, marketing, and product-led growth.The feature also allows for deep linking to sections of the app – this ensures we have continuity in our messaging and experiences which in turn helps customers better understand the value we offer. We plan to rollout targeted push notifications in Q1 2023 for potential use cases like cart abandonment, referrals, and app upgrades.

PCX: Arrival Check-in

12.06.2022

Arrival check-in on PC Expressᵀᴹ for iOS and Android went live on December 1. The feature allows PC Expressᵀᴹ customers to let their selected store know of their arrival and where they're parked. If needed, customers can use the feature to share a link with someone else who might be picking up the order on their behalf, or call the store if required. The feature makes it easier for customers to communicate to their pickup store and make the entire PC Expressᵀᴹ experience more seamless.

Joe Fresh: Split Shipments

11.29.2022

Split shipments are live as of November 13. New experience flows in our internal picking app ensure that an order can be partially shipped and the remainder redirected to a different location if an item in an order is not available at the time of fulfilment. Updates to the customer experience were also made to include partial shipment emails and My Account order status to give customers visibility into the progress of an order. Overall, this capability will enable ongoing optimization of online product assortment, higher fulfilment rates, faster fulfilment times, and reduced shipping costs.

PCO: Mini App Ecosystem

11.29.2022

Our Marketplace mini app has been available in the PC Optimumᵀᴹ app to 100% of customers since November 11. We are currently working through ongoing post-MVP improvements, including: added search capabilities, filters and relevance options for product search, multiple carousel support, haptics feedback and collection pages support.

PCXRD : Rapid Order Tracking

11.29.2022

PC Expressᵀᴹ Rapid Delivery order tracking launched on November 15. Now when a customer places an order for rapid delivery on PC Expressᵀᴹ, they can monitor the progress of their order with an updating timeline and live dasher location tracking. This enables a significantly smoother, clearer delivery experience that helps manage customer expectations. The feature was built with Google API for the map and DoorDash API to track the status of the dasher.

Java: Next Gen Booster Projects

11.29.2022

Over ten improvements to a previous version of Spring Boot Project have gone live on GitLab in support of internal services written in Java. These projects, ranging from booster-task to booster-starter, will improve the use of threads, help standardize multi-threaded programming, and provide common error recovery methods used in a typical microservice environment.