The Phillip Island Chocolate Factory is much more than a working chocolate factory that you can see in action. Visitors can also tour the interactive and educational chocolate exhibition and enjoy the café and retail store.

The Challenge

As a key part of its marketing strategy, the Chocolate Factory wanted an easy-to-use website built in a flexible technology that offered them value for money.

‘The Phillip Island Chocolate Factory is also known as Panny’s and Panny’s Amazing World of Chocolate so a website that unified these elements into a single recognizable brand was critical’, said General Manager, Michael Schuller.

As well as providing information about the attraction and educational materials about chocolate, the website needed to have an online store to sell the full range of Panny’s chocolates including its popular bars as diverse as pineapple rough to dark mocca.

The Process

When purpleC showed Michael how easy it would be for him to manage the website’s content behind the scenes, he knew this was the solution for the Chocolate Factory. (For those less adventurous, purpleC are also able to make changes to websites relatively quickly and easily too).

Michael said, ‘I am primarily self-taught with technology and picked up how to use the system within minutes - it was intuitive and logical. I can update our content including photos very easily and can also add buttons for Christmas and Easter for example’.

purpleC offered valuable suggestions and were very amenable to working in with the others that the Chocolate Factory already had involved in the project such as graphic designers. They helped simplify the information structure and kept the whole project focused so it got built to the requirements.

The Result

The website that purpleC built is as mouthwatering as Panny’s chocolate. As well as boosting sales through the online store, the website is proving to be an asset in the Chocolate Factory’s marketing plans acting as a central hub for other resources such as a CD that links back to the website.

‘After media attention, including television coverage, people visit our website as a second port of call. We know that more people are visiting and staying longer on the website than ever before. Surprisingly, even the school students who visit know some answers to our questions because the have used our website which is rich in content prior to their visit’.

And yes, the iconic chocolate waterfall does look as good in real life as the professional photographs that are used effectively on the very engaging website.

View our work at www.phillipislandchocolatefactory.com.au