The cost of not owning your digital experience

In working with franchise leaders across Australia, it’s become clear that many rely on white-label solutions for their digital experience, provided by core systems vendors. This can include mobile apps, ordering or booking experiences, and checkout flows. While this approach might appear quick, easy and cost-effective initially, the reality is that it creates substantial limitations and costs more in the long run.

Impact on conversion rate and costs

In our experience, using white label or 3rd party solutions often result in:

• Poor conversion rates - We’ve been able to increase conversion rates anywhere from 30%-350% through replacing generic white-label interfaces with custom, user-centred, on-brand experiences.
• Limited average order value - Without personalisation, intelligent up-sell, and loyalty programs, you miss powerful opportunities to increase basket size. This is especially relevant now as Australian average transaction values have fallen to $95 in 2024 - a 2.1% decrease from 2023 and the lowest figure in a decade.
• Increased customer acquisition costs - When your digital experience doesn’t meet user expectations or reflect your brand’s unique value proposition, you end up spending more on marketing to compensate.

Working example: For a franchise with 10,000 monthly website visitors at the Australian average conversion rate of 3.4%, improving conversion by just one percentage point to 4.4% would generate an additional $95,000 in monthly revenue (1,000 additional transactions × $95 average order value).

Data ownership and fragmentation

If you don’t own your digital experience, you typically don’t own your customer data either. This means:

• Your competitive intelligence remains siloed and trapped in vendor systems
• You can’t unlock the power of your customer data for multi-channel personalisation and experiences using customer experience tools like Braze - our go-to for orchestrating loyalty, personalisation, and multi-channel campaigns
• You are unable to unify your data and properly understand customer lifetime value or nurture your highest value customers

Segment CDP is a best-in-class solution we recommend for unifying customer data across all channels, enabling franchises to create real-time, individualised customer experiences that drive loyalty and growth. If all your customer and transactional data is locked in a third-party POS or booking system, it’s challenging to leverage that data for behavioural insights, personalisation, or loyalty programs.

Lack of innovation due to vendor dependance

Perhaps one of the most damaging aspects to long-term competitive advantage is how vendor-controlled experiences limit your ability to evolve and adapt to a changing market. Here’s the impact if parts of your experience are owned by third parties:

• Your feature requests or enhancements are prioritised based on your spend, which means your technology roadmap is dictated by your vendors’ largest clients
• Customisations become a negotiation. “Sorry, that’s not on our roadmap for the next 12 months”. Or, “It’s coming this year”, but in reality, most of the time the promise is never met within the promised timeline
• Limited ability to experiment and optimise the experience. Want to A/B test a new checkout flow? Unlikely, and definitely not without vendor approval
• Competitive differentiation is hard. When many competitors in your market are using the same white-label solution, how do you stand out and uniquely represent your brand?

This innovation gap is particularly critical now as Australian consumer expectations continue to evolve. Research shows 61% of Gen Zs, 62% of Millennials, and 56% of Gen Xs want online retailers to provide more personalised offers in the future. Meeting these expectations requires direct control over your digital experience.

Taking control back through a composable approach

The most successful and innovative franchise businesses are addressing these challenges by creating custom digital experiences underpinned by a composable architecture - a modular approach that separates the customer experience layer from back-end systems (like point of sale or booking systems). This strategic shift delivers three key benefits:

Revenue growth through experience ownership

By taking control of your digital experience you can:

• Increase conversion rates which leads to more revenue and better return on your ad spend (ROAS)
• Boost average order values through intelligent and multi-channel personalisation and upsell
• Reduce cart abandonment through streamlining checkout flows and conversion pathways

Customer intelligence through unified data and profiles

Centralising customer data creates a strategic asset that enables:

• 360-degree customer profiles combining online and offline behaviours powered by tools like Segment CDP for a true single customer view
• Ability to drive personalised experiences that increase revenue
• Complete customer profiled data that is needed to underpin loyalty and maximise value from customers
• Predictive analytics to anticipate customer needs and optimise your marketing spend

Competitive agility through technology independence

By implementing an owned and custom digital experience, underpinned by a composable architecture you can:

• Control your innovation roadmap and prioritise new features and capability based on ROI and business impact, not vendor constraints
• Increase speed to market for new capabilities without being at the mercy of your vendors’ roadmap and control of your experience
• Freedom to integrate best-of-breed solutions matched to your business and specific needs

This agility is increasingly valuable in Australia’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, where three-quarters of Gen Zs and Millennials intend to shop online more in the coming years.

Composable content experiences

Delivering seamless, on-brand experiences across all channels is only possible with the right content platform. We recommend platforms like Contentful and Sanity for composable content management, allowing you to create, manage, and publish content across web and mobile from a single, flexible source. These platforms enable rapid innovation and consistent customer journeys, supporting everything from campaign landing pages to in-app content.

Mini case study: Nando's shift to owning the digital experience

Nando’s transformation demonstrates the business impact of this approach. Faced with limited control over their digital experience and customer data fragmentation across multiple systems, they adopted a composable architecture that:

• Unified the customer experience across web, mobile app, and in-store touchpoints
• Centralised customer data into a customer data platform (CDP) to enable personalisation and marketing automation
• Accelerated innovation cycles through flexible technology architecture

The business results have been compelling:

• 750% increase in online ordering year-over-year
• 160% growth in loyalty program membership
• Positive ROI within six months of launch
• Significantly improved speed to market for new features (weeks vs. months)

What's particularly noteworthy is how Nando's approached this evolution. Rather than a high-risk "big bang" transformation, they:

1. Started with a clear minimum viable product focused on core customer needs
2. Adopted a product mindset with continuous improvement rather than a project approach
3. Leveraged modern cloud-native technologies including Next.js, React Native, and a headless CMS
4. Implemented a data strategy that unified customer information from multiple sources
5. Introduced best in breed solutions such as mParticle and Braze to drive loyalty and unlock even more value from their customer data

Addressing common concerns

These are the most common concerns we hear from franchises when considering the investment to build out custom and owned digital experiences:

"This sounds expensive compared to off-the-shelf solutions"

While there is upfront investment required, the ROI materialises much faster than traditional transformation projects. The key is to focus the initial development on high-value customer journeys with clear revenue impact.

With Australian e-commerce projected to grow to $70.3 billion by 2029, even modest improvements in conversion rates and average order value can deliver substantial returns. We’ve just launched a redesigned custom booking experience for a client and in the first few months we’ve already seen a 30%+ increase in conversion rates-a good example of where focused effort drives immediate returns.

"We don't have the technical expertise to maintain a custom solution"

With the right technology and solutions in place, ongoing maintenance and enhancements can increasingly be managed by your in-house team. Platforms like Contentful and Sanity are designed for ease of use, scalability, and integration, making it feasible for organisations to directly oversee day-to-day operations. This approach provides full control, enables immediate response to issues, and allows your business to adapt quickly as needs evolve.

For larger features and new capabilities, partnering with the right technology provider remains crucial. The investment in a trusted partner is typically justified by a clear business case and ongoing return on investment, especially when rolling out complex initiatives or integrating new technologies. The most effective partnerships are collaborative, with your partner supporting you not only in delivery but also in building internal capability over time.

As your business matures in its digital journey, you can gradually scale your in-house resources, taking greater ownership of your technology roadmap. The right partner will support this transition, helping you build the skills and processes needed to manage and enhance your digital platforms independently, while remaining available for strategic projects or specialised support as required

"Our franchisees are resistant to technology change"

Change resistance is a legitimate concern, but we've found that in most cases franchisees enthusiastically adopt technology that:

• Directly improves their bottom line
• Reduces operational complexity
• Provides visibility into customer behaviour

With 9.8 million Australian households now shopping online and annual e-commerce spending at $69 billion, franchisees who delay digital adoption risk significant revenue loss. The key is involving franchisees early in the process and demonstrating tangible benefits to their specific locations. They should be consulted during the strategic process to ensure their challenges are addressed through the technology.

Wrapping things up

The franchise businesses winning in today’s digital-first Australian market are those taking control of their customer experience, unifying their customer data, and evolving at market speed. They’re rejecting the limitations of vendor-controlled experiences and building digital capabilities that create sustainable competitive advantage.

This isn’t about technology for technology’s sake-it’s about creating the conditions for business growth through superior customer experiences, data-driven insights, and market agility.

Ready to explore how composable architecture can address your franchise’s specific business challenges? Let’s discuss your particular situation and identify opportunities for digital evolution that deliver measurable business impact. Contact Inlight for a consultation with our strategy team.