One of the world’s premier purveyors of fine coffee has ...



One of the world’s premier purveyors of fine coffee has gone online with a Web site and virtual store. Built by Organic using Microsoft® commerce technologies, including Microsoft Site Server Commerce Edition, the sophisticated site will allow millions of people to have the Starbucks Experience from the comfort of their home or office while helping Starbucks heighten brand awareness, widen its customer base, and increase sales.

Starbucks Coffee Company and the Internet have been two of the biggest growth stories of the 1990s. Now, with the introduction of Starbucks Web site and virtual store (), those two stories have converged.

Built by Organic (with help from Servinet Consulting and Microsoft® Consulting Services) and based on Microsoft commerce technologies, including the Microsoft BackOffice® family of server applications, the Starbucks site is not only a sophisticated commerce solution, but is also a powerful new way for the company to interact with potential and existing customers around the world.

Extending the Experience

Starbucks made the decision to create a commerce-enabled Web site in 1998, following a series of “digital strategy” planning sessions.

“Our goals for the project were really threefold: branding, e-commerce, and customer communication,” says Heidi Wells, the program manager at Starbucks in charge of the Web site project. “Basically, we wanted to extend the Starbucks Experience online in a multitude of ways. We wanted to tell our story in our own words, and we know that the Web is a really great place to share it beyond our stores,” says Wells.

Finding the Right Partners and Technologies

For help in bringing its vision to life, Starbucks turned to leading interactive architect Organic.

“We looked at Organic because they have done work with some big brands, passion brands if you will,” recalls Wells. “Company fit was also important, and we felt they could do a really good job of helping us create our online vision.” Debbi Gillotti, Starbucks CIO, felt the same way. “They have been a leader in bringing businesses online over the past few

years and have a reputation for consistently delivering high-quality sites that extend their customer's brand.”

To provide the foundation for its Web site and commerce solution, Starbucks chose the Microsoft BackOffice family, including Microsoft Windows NT® Server, its built-in Web server component Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), Microsoft SQL Server™, and Microsoft Site Server Commerce Edition.

“Starbucks made the decision to build our commerce Web site using Microsoft technologies for strategic reasons,” explains Gillotti. “We believe that Microsoft is now and will continue to be a leading player in the Web arena. A Microsoft foundation also provides Starbucks with the scalability to allow our site to grow to provide additional functionality for our customers.”

According to Application Manager Paul Blair, Starbucks found Microsoft Site Server Commerce Edition, particularly appealing.

“Site Server came with a lot of prebuilt commerce components that we could build upon,” says Blair, “so we weren’t really starting completely from scratch. It also gave us many of the other add-on kinds of things, like usage analysis, so we could monitor traffic and see purchasing trends.”

From Concept to Reality: A Joint Effort

Creating the Starbucks site was a collaborative process. Starbucks and Organic worked together to design the site’s structure, art elements, and content. Using the Microsoft

Visual Studio® 97 development system and Active Server Pages (ASP), Organic then turned the site from concept to reality.

Helping Organic and Starbucks during a key phase of the development process was Servinet Consulting, a Microsoft Certified Solution Provider. “They added value to the project during the configuration of our servers because of their experience in similar Web site installations using Microsoft technology,” says Blair. “This allowed us to shorten our implementation timeline while still ensuring that the server configurations were sound.”

Throughout the development process, Microsoft Consulting Services provided invaluable technical advice and assistance. “That’s been one of the benefits of working with Microsoft, because they obviously have had a lot of experience with Web development and hosting,” says Blair. “So we could leverage their skills and identify what kind of servers we need, what software we should be putting on each of the servers, and how we can allow for growth.”

Gillotti feels that teamwork played a crucial role in making the project a success. “The teamwork between Starbucks, Organic, and Microsoft during the development of the site was critical,” she says. “Microsoft provided extensive support that enabled Organic to deliver a site that exceeded our expectations. Microsoft and Organic also worked as a team to share knowledge and utilize the extensive resources available from the various product groups within Microsoft.”

For her part, Wells too is delighted with the service Starbucks received from all of the companies involved. “I think they all made excellent contributions,” she says. “Microsoft was there every step of the way, wanting to help ensure that we had a really great site, as was Organic.”

The Definitive Place to Go

True to the original vision, the Starbucks Web site offers a variety of ways to participate in the “Starbucks Experience” online. Through the online store, visitors can purchase coffee, coffee samplers, coffee-related gifts, CDs, and more. A store locator with mapping functionality helps users find the Starbucks location nearest them, while the unique Coffee “Taste Matcher” interactively recommends coffees based on a user’s preferences. There’s even a comprehensive guide to coffee with information about everything from coffee history and growing regions to how to brew a perfect cup.

“In our usability tests, people said they wanted that information,” says Wells. “They expect our site to be the definitive place to go for coffee information.”

The site also offers detailed information about Starbucks itself, including a company overview, investor data, and job listings. “Starbucks is a company that people are interested in and want to know about,” observes Wells. “Now they’ll be able to go to the Web site and get the latest information in one place.” Included in this portion of the site are detailed descriptions of Starbucks many philanthropic pursuits, such as the Starbucks Foundation.

Scalable Architecture

Hosted by Organic in San Francisco, the Starbucks site is powered by nine Hewlett-Packard servers divided into three groups. “There is one large development server,” says Doug Kaye, Organic’s vice president of Engineering. “We then have a staging environment, which has two Web servers and one database server. The production environment has three Web servers and two database servers. We use a combination of Microsoft Visual SourceSafe™ version control system, and the replication facilities of Microsoft Site Server to manage deployment of content between those environments.”

The site also uses Cisco’s Local Director to handle load balancing. An interface custom-written by Starbucks and Organic securely links the site to the company’s AS400-based order management system in Seattle. New orders are downloaded once an hour, processed by the same fulfillment center that supports Starbucks’ direct response catalog business, and shipped the next day.

Kaye feels confident that the Starbucks site will deliver excellent performance. “We’ve done some stress testing, and we haven’t been able to slow it down much,” he says. “This thing really performs well.” That scalability is likely to come in handy, because the young site is already receiving 300,000 hits a day. Wells expects that trend to continue. “People are clearly looking for Starbucks on the Web, so we’re expecting some big numbers.”

And big benefits too. “Our new Web site provides the opportunity to extend the Starbucks Experience to the Internet community and reach many new potential customers who might not have the benefit of living near a Starbucks retail store,” says Gillotti. “Not only does it provide a great outlet for us to expand our direct sales of quality coffee and gifts, but it can also serve as the foundation for a virtual community to link our many devoted customers around topics they enjoy. We think this will bring a very exciting new dimension to the Starbucks Experience!”

In addition, Starbucks expects the site to generate valuable data about its customer base. “Certainly we’ll do direct e-mail campaigns and promotions with that data, and also analyze the data, looking at shopping patterns, average order price, and behavior,” says Wells. “In order to prove your return on investment, you need to be able to do all that. We’ll also be

looking at the demographic information, who’s coming to the site, how often are they coming, what they are accessing. We want to build in features so we can interact with our customers more and understand what they want.”

New Features to Come

In fact, Starbucks will be building in a lot of new features over the months ahead.

“We’re hoping to expand into business-to-business gifts,” says Wells. “Instead of sending a sweatshirt, you can send a gift basket from Starbucks. We’ll also be adding more store functionality surrounding our coffee offerings. We want to add membership and personalization. It’s a very exciting time because there’s just so much we can do to enhance the site.”

According to Blair, Starbucks will also soon be adding up-sell and cross-sell functionality. “Once we’ve started building a transaction history database, we’ll be able to recommend a product based on what other customers are buying,” he says. “For example, if many customers who buy a pound of our house blend coffee are also buying a half-pound of the decaf, we will be able to identify that and recommend the decaf to someone buying the house blend. So we think we may get some additional sales because of that.”

Aggressive Release Schedule

Creating a Web site hasn’t been the only recent technology initiative at Starbucks. In the past year, Starbucks has rolled out the Microsoft Windows® 95 operating system and Microsoft Office 97 to all of its desktops, deployed Microsoft Exchange Server as its messaging platform, provided employee Internet access, and begun creating a corporate intranet based on Windows NT Server and Internet Information Server. Points out Gillotti, using Microsoft technologies for the intranet “will allow us to share resources across multiple Web sites.” Observes Wells, “we’ve had our hands kind of full this year.”

As for the Web site, Wells expects the holiday season to be its first big test. “The Holidays will be a very important time for us online,” she says. “We’ll change the look of the site for this holiday season, as well as offer holiday merchandise gift baskets and the like for both consumers and businesses.” Such seasonal changes to the site’s design and offerings will be regular occurrences.

“It’s an excellent first-generation Web site,” says Wells, summing matters up. “I think we’re on a par with second- and third-generation Web sites that exist today. And we’ll be constantly adding to it. We have a number of releases planned over the next year, which is pretty aggressive. This is really just the beginning.”

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products or services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada information Centre at (800) 563-9048. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information via the World Wide Web, go to:



About Organic

Organic

510 Third Street

Suite 540

San Francisco, CA 94107

Tel.: 415-284-6888

Fax: 415-284-6891

Web site:

Organic has been helping industry leaders build businesses online since 1993. With years of groundbreaking experience and industry leadership, Organic fuses sound strategic insight, engaging interactive design, and powerful technology expertise to create successful e-commerce and interactive solutions for a broad client base.

About Servinet

Servinet Consulting

345 Spear Street

Suite 510

San Francisco, CA 94105

Tel.: 415-243-9201

Fax: 415-243-0270

© 1998 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Microsoft, BackOffice, FrontPage, Visual SourceSafe, Visual Studio, Windows, and Windows NT are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Other product and company names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Starbucks makes no warranties, expressed or implied, in this summary. Starbucks marks in the U.S. are owned by Starbucks U.S. Brands under license to Starbucks. Starbucks marks outside the U.S. are owned by Starbucks Corporation.

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Solution Overview

Industry

Food Products

Scenario

Commerce - Direct Marketing, Selling, and Services

Products Used

Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5

Microsoft FrontPage® 98

Microsoft Internet Information Server 4.0

Microsoft Office 97

Microsoft Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition

Microsoft SQL Server 6.5

Microsoft Visual SourceSafe 6.0

Microsoft Visual Studio 97

Microsoft Windows 95

Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0

Partners

Organic

Servinet Consulting

Microsoft Services Used

Microsoft Consulting Services

“Our new Web site provides the opportunity to extend the Starbucks Experience to the Internet community and reach many new potential customers who might not have the benefit of living near a Starbucks retail store. Not only does it provide a great outlet for us to expand our direct sales of quality coffee and gifts, but it can also serve as the foundation for a virtual community to link our many devoted customers around topics they enjoy. We think this will bring a very exciting new dimension to the Starbucks Experience!”

Debbi Gillotti

CIO

Starbucks Coffee Company

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Debbi Gillotti

CIO

Starbucks Coffee Company

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