Impressive, right?
But how? That is the question.
Letās find out.
Some Divante facts: 10 years on the market, 150+ global clients, 200+ team members, 1000+ projects delivered, own products developed for the e-commerce market and 2 e-commerce open-source solutions (Open Loyalty and Vue Storefront).
The feedback on Github, Capterra and g2crowd looks really good for Vue Storefront, which is acclaimed as No. 1 open source progressive web app for e-Commerce:
So, 10 years of steady growth and business expansion.
And let's not forget they've recently opened an office in Amsterdam and Berlin, and they're expanding to Singapore as well.
The purpose of this new office was being closer to their clients from the DACH countries.
Next, let's look a bit at what the Divante clients have to say about them:
āOur income has doubledā, āreduced our time to marketā, āincrease website trafficā - thatās what I call results oriented.
But how did Divante get here: a top player in the e-commerce software industry?
Follow me to find out:
After so much pain and struggle for a former communist country, itās time for a rebirth.
Poland is reinventing itself and reshaping the IT outsourcing environment.
āWhen life gives you lemons, make lemonadeā - this came to life in Wroclaw.
Divante, the e-commerce software house is leading the way.
T-Mobile, Ringier Axel, Continental, Tchibo, Intersport are just a few of Divanteās global clients.
But what lays behind the lemonade?
Strategic marketing.
And weāll reverse engineer it.
A brand vision should attempt to go beyond functional benefits to consider organizational values; a higher purpose; brand personality; and emotional, social, and self-expressive benefits. ā David Aaker (the father of modern branding)
Every step a business makes, in relationship with each and every stakeholder, will translate itself in branding.
A satisfied customer, an unhappy employee, an empowered student at a hackathon, a comment on social media, everything will generate word-of-mouth and brand awareness.
So, what does the market have to say about Divante?
First of all, weāve mentioned the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 nomination in 2017 and the Clutch reviews.
Further on, in our article, weāll see how community and social media engagements are handled.
Because, in the end, with all the tech development, the human touch will get you fans, employees and customers.
Social media is a great channel for a business to include the community in the communication, help build trust and develop long-lasting relationships.
Divante clearly understands this, just look at these numbers:
Looking good for an e-commerce software house.
Divanteās Facebook Page
Divanteās Facebook profile has a client approach. Through consistently publishing posts, Divante wants to prove expertise in the field, hence build trust around the brand.
The posts are merely about:
The interactions are a bit scarce.
But this isnāt a surprise. From what weāve analyzed so far, the most popular posts for software houses posting on Facebook, are people related, such as team events, introducing team members etc.
The LinkedIn profile content is also client-aimed. The posts refer to:
Divante almost replicates the Facebook and LinkedIn content within its tweets.
Events are in the spotlight here: speaking gigs, attending conferences and summits, but also sharing content they build.
Curiously, this is the first software house Iāve encountered that does not rely much on social media to build employer branding.
The communication is mostly oriented towards gaining new clients.
Whenever you would see a Magento event, for sure Divante is there.
They donāt usually miss making an appearance, as attendees or speakers.
Now, take a look at their roadmap, pretty busy!
On the employer branding side, they're busy as well: meetups, hackathons you name it.
But these are just a drop in the ocean.
Take a look at the community built around Vue Storefront!
One single Glassdoor review for Divante, a positive one, but, statistically speaking, not significant.
As weāve mentioned before, through community networking, Divante is opening communication doors to future employees.
Speaking of, they have 15 ONGOING open positions, mostly for developers. The head of content position is standing out from the busy crowd of developers and engineers.
The āongoingā status of the jobs explains a lot, especially when you look at this data: 600+ developers wanted in Wroclaw.
Divante has growth plans: opening new offices and hiring people.
But this thing goes even bigger: they want to build the Vue A-team, the best in Europe.
Another thing that struck me is the company's structure.
By now we've already heard about flat structures and holacracy, Divante is experimenting with something else: the Tribe Model inspired by Spotify.
This model is trying to split the organization into smaller organizations. We've got squads, guilds, and other types of teams. These teams are autonomous, self-organizing and self-managing.
So far so good, or so it seems for Divante's new structure.
The website has a intuitive and user friendly interface. Itās easy for the buyer persona to find an answer to its questions:
What does Divante do?
"Weāre experts in providing top-notch eCommerce solutions and products for both B2B and B2C segments."
What technologies do you use?
Vue, Pimcore, Magento, SAP...
What services do you offer?
The menu is well organized, with clearly stated submenus in terms of products and services.
Besides services, Divante has built its own products for e-commerce:
This only comes natural for a software house, after gaining so much knowledge, moving towards a SaaS approach has long term benefits.
How can I trust you?
Case studies backed by data, testimonials, client listing, awards.
How can I contact you?
If you want more data, Divante has prepared a top-notch info pack.
In terms of conversion rate optimization, they seem to be using Hotjar (according to SimilarTech). Also they are using Hubspot chat and forms for marketing automation purposes. In the end, it's all for the sake of improving the sales cycle and conversion rates.
The main website traffic sources for June 2019 were:
What could account as direct website traffic?
Like for our Netguru growth story, the approach for the content marketing analysis is based on the RACE framework.
I'm gonna look at the content strategy from the reach and act stages, where you build awareness around the brand and design the first touchpoints with the contacts.
The convert phase of the RACE framework revolves around paying customers, so this is a task for the sales team. The marketing team is responsible for generating high quality leads in the first two phases.
The engage part of the framework y the sales team in B2B, while the engage part can have different responsibles (account managers, support team, CEO...).
Brand awareness at Divance is built mainly through offline events, social media postings, blog and website content.
Now, let's move a bit to the blog. The blog is updated about bi-weekly. Lots of categories are used.
The majority of the posts are not very technical, and, besides Agata MÅodawska, the Marketing Manager and Aleksandra Kwiecien, the Content Manager, other non-marketing team members are writing content.
From time to time, some pieces of content are signed by Tom and Piotr Karwatka, the CEO and CTO of Divante.
But letās see which are the most valuable pages on the Divante website:
It seems that the most traffic is brought to the blog pages. In the top 10 pages, there are only two pages that are not blog related: the homepage and contact page.
But letās take a look at the keywords. The trend looks nice, slowly but surely upward.
Only one keyword cluster is standing out in terms of traffic and position: banking loyalty programs/rewards.
Moving away from the blog, Divante has created really powerful non-gated pieces of content:
It's time to move further down in the funnel. During the act phase users engage with Divante's gated content. In exchange for contact data they get access to original, valuable information.
The tools used here are:
Divante seems to be testing various lead magnet designs, positioning the CTA and form above or below the fold.
It seems that they employ virality tools, shares in exchange for download via Pay with a Tweet.
Backlinks to Support Content Marketing
Good original content needs backlinks in order to get some Google love. So, let's peep at Divante's backlinks a bit.
The links come from relevant e-commerce or SaaS related websites.
Guest blogging seems to be a backlink and traffic source as well, gotcha Agata:
In terms of paid Google search ads, Divante is promoting the Magento development service, bidding on āmagento web developmentā related keywords, which are really bottom of the funnel keywords. They go straight for high intent keywords.
On the other hand, they also push ads that promote their reports.
The landing page is really compelling, with its clear CTA and above the fold social proof.
Spyfu estimates a budget below $1k.
While the Google search ads are Magento focused, on the sponsored Facebook posts side we see a progressive web apps approach.
Using Similar Tech I've noticed that they have the Quora, AdRoll retargeting pixels installed as well, also the Twitter and Bing pixels.
So, there's more than meets the eye with these guys when it comes to paid advertising. They don't shy away from challenges.
Regarding the Medium positioning, it seems that Piotr Krawatka, CTO of Divante, and other Divante colleagues are editing The Vue Storefront Journal.
Beginning with June 2018, there is an increasing Medium focus. And the engagement seems rewarding.
From the B2B marketing point of view, it seems that a consistent content strategy, seasoned with some events and marketing automation, is the recipe of success for this e-commerce software house, Divante.
But letās make a more comprehensive list of takeaways:
So, this was our Divante pit stop.
But the race aināt over yet.
And itās not only about Wroclaw, but Poland's success story.
So, check out our Growth Marketing Secrets of Top European Software Houses - Poland Edition 2019 ebook to see below the tip of the iceberg.