Pizza Hut fightback gets personal

Pizza Hut has overhauled its data strategy to launch a “digital flagship restaurant” and give customers a more personalised online experience that can adapt to being viewed across any mobile device.
The new strategy and responsive website, which coincides with the company’s 40th anniversary, has been devised digital agency Amaze.
Designed to play catch up with online market leader Domino’s, it has been achieved by linking up multiple datasets, including customer relationship management (CRM) and sales statistics.
The site has been designed to tailor the individual visitor experience and deliver relevant content based on what device they are on, their location and previous browsing and shopping behaviour on the site.
It can detect a customer’s location to identify the closest restaurants to them, with the view to serving menus and daily offers via their mobile device.
Meanwhile, the site plugs into other data systems including its sales statistics to show information such as what the ‘top five pizza choices’ are in each restaurant, city and region.
Pizza Hut Restaurants marketing director Kathryn Austin said: “The new website acts as our digital flagship restaurant, with a unique personalised feel for our users, which supports our business needs. The team at Amaze has captured the very essence of our approach to casual dining and translated the importance of locality into a clever and very personal user journey.”
Pizza Hut’s online operation was launched more than five years ago, but has only recently started picking up pace. Two years ago it enlisted the services of data centre provider Virtustream to help it handle the 1 million online orders it was receiving every week.
The company is aiming to cash in on rising pizza sales; rival Domino’s recently revealed that consumers are turning to pepperoni and cheese to take their minds off their dire bank balances, recording a 60% rise in sales.

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