Little Starts Gift Cards
Some marketing projects are short and sweet. A campaign landing page here or a specific email marketing sequence there. Other marketing projects are epic. They are the kind of all-encompassing project that pulls in the skills across the marketing team. That’s exactly what our digital project with Little Starts Gift Cards did. It was almost 12 months from when we began scoping the website and required digital platform to delivery of the live site.
Project requirements
There were some specific requirements for the digital project with the overall aim of elevating the brand from a start-up to reflect the national brand it had grown into. Little Starts needed a digital platform to scale the business and be stocked in national retailers.
The project brief included:
- A modern, on-brand, user-friendly website optimised for desktop and mobile use
- Super smooth user interface and user experience (UX and UI)
- E-commerce functionality so customers could purchase gift cards directly from the website
- A multi-layered portal/ database with individual logins so Children’s Activity Providers could upload class information
- Ability to redeem gift cards on the platform
- Bespoke API to enable sales in national retailers and through corporate rewards partners
- Content Management System for easy editing of the website, including a blog and news function
- Reporting functionality on sales, gift card redemptions, website traffic and more
Introducing Little Starts Gift Cards
Who are Little Starts Gift Cards? They are a game-changer when buying presents for new parents or parents-to-be. Little Starts Gift Cards is the UK’s leading gift card provider for baby, toddler and preschool classes. The gift cards are perfect presents for occasions like baby showers, parental leave, christenings, first birthdays and more.
Any parent will know that having children often means toys and clothes are lovingly gifted, but they often end up being outgrown or unused. Gifting experiences over things helps child development and parental mental health, and it’s kinder to the environment.
The company has such a brilliantly unique offering that they have grown at an unprecedented rate. You can see from their website that Little Starts Gift Cards are accepted at over 20,000 classes nationwide from RugbyTots, Baby Sensory, Water Babies, Puddle Ducks, Babyballet and more. They even picked up a couple of gift card industry awards last year!
On receipt of a Little Starts Gift Card, parents can choose a class at a place and time that suits them, covering everything from dancing to doodling and singing to splashing.
The Little Starts Gift Card tackles the problem of unwanted, outgrown toys. Plus, they are ideal for new parents looking to leave the house and spend quality time with their little ones.
The children's activity provider portal
The new digital platform launched in Q4 2023. First, the Activity Provider Portal was unveiled to the Little Starts network of class providers. This self-service portal enabled them to check and update their class listings, add details of each class, add billing information, redeem gift cards and more.
It was imperative to have as many class listings as possible up to date and live before the front end of the website was released. Otherwise, gift card purchasers and users wouldn’t have the best experience when searching for classes on the front end of the website.
The Livewire team supported Little Starts with the brand communications to ensure early adoption and buy-in from the Activity Provider network. With over 200 brands and 20,000+ classes, there was a lot of data to accommodate!
The early feedback was encouraging. ‘I must congratulate you on the website’s ease of use’ and ‘I found the whole procedure really simple’.
The Little Starts Gift Cards website
The new, rebranded and updated Little Starts Gift Card website officially launched in late October 2023, around one month after the Activity Provider network had access to the database side of the platform.
The feedback was overwhelmingly positive – ‘Huge congratulations, the website looks brilliant’ from customers and, from the Little Starts team, “Thank you so much for all your exceptional hard work and excellent delivery. Aside from the website, you have helped facilitate the sale and use of a product that has a tangible impact on the health and development of children, the wellbeing of new parents and the success of the 2000+ small business operators.”
Corporate and retail launch - the API phase
The launch of the new website and Activity Provider portal was not where our journey with Little Starts ended.
The website was enabled with e-commerce functionality so customers can purchase gift cards directly from the site. However, from December 2023, Little Starts Gift Cards achieved their most significant milestone to date, launching in national retail. Starting with Sainsbury’s supermarkets and closely followed by Argos, the gift cards could be purchased in stores across the UK.
The digital platform Livewire developed needed bespoke APIs to work with the retail systems. The gift cards needed to be activated and relevant amounts loaded onto them, and of course, they needed to be secure and ready to redeem.
Alongside the retail APIs, Little Starts also works with corporate teams and rewards and benefits platforms offering gift cards typically for parental leave. Again, a dedicated API was required to allow these companies to access Little Starts Gift Cards in real-time.
Livewire’s developer team worked closely with our partner development teams to create and deploy a functional API in good time for the retail launch.
Project summary
From the initial scoping to the launching of this extensive digital platform, it was a 12-month project. The skilled team from Livewire Marketing included software developers, a project manager, designer, UX/UI testers, copywriters and other skilled colleagues.
Pushing the website live and seeing Little Starts Gift Cards available in Sainsbury’s and Argos was a ‘pinch-me’ moment for the team. We’ll continue supporting Little Starts with website optimisation and content creation, and we know they will continue to thrive in 2024 and beyond.
Contact our expert team today if you need support with a website project, database design or content creation.
