Ricola

For nearly 100 years, Ricola has brought the delight of Swiss Alpine herbs to people around the world. However, its website was not fully equipped to support the brand’s mission of delivering its soothing drops to everyone, everyday, everywhere. 

The website no longer effectively represented the brand’s core characteristics and, while functional, was technically outdated. Lacking key features, such as a flexible content management system and the possibility to securely integrate third-party tools, the site made it increasingly difficult to strategically improve content performance and align the brand narratives across markets. This led to inconsistency in the brand’s communications across its various markets, drawing varied perceptions from consumers. 

DEPT® was tasked with developing a new website that was flexible enough to accommodate the specifics of each market, was e-commerce ready to future-proof Ricola’s business requirement and direct-to-consumer strategies, and served as a storytelling hub to support Ricola’s global brand identity, the Mighty Alpine Spirit.

We developed a platform that showcases and enhances the world of Ricola: a combination of nature, heritage, and innovation. The new website is modern and user-friendly, designed to be a space for consumers to both experience the brand and shop its products directly. Inspired by the spirit of the Alps—where small can feel mighty—the design and content of the site reflect the Ricola’s roots and ensure customers around the world feel connected to the brand’s values.

The new website design focuses on Swiss nature and Ricola’s signature Swiss Alpine herbs that have remained the center of its products and innovations since 1930. 

We built a flexible, global master template that local markets can adapt to their needs. The template combines nature elements and playfulness to create a refreshing digital environment with a balance of product focus and brand discovery. The website also allows markets to spotlight curated content while emphasizing Ricola’s unique herbal blend and its commitment to sustainability.

The navigation is clearly structured and user-friendly, with categories including Products, Discover, and About Us that intuitively guide the visitors through the website. Experience-rich product pages offer high-quality images, detailed product descriptions, features, and recommendations. Micro-interactions and animations make visiting the website even more delightful. 

We leveraged MACH architecture to future-proof Ricola’s technical foundation. DatoCMS was selected to efficiently manage and customize content across different channels, while the headless architecture ensures seamless API integration. 

DEPT® developed the front end using the Astro framework with an architecture in which all pages and language versions are generated statically and distributed worldwide via a content delivery network (CDN). This approach ensures maximum performance and security, as no API queries to the CMS are required at runtime. Dynamic content such as product prices and availability are only rendered in the browser using Component Islands to provide up-to-date data without invalidating the cache for small changes.

The hybrid approach, which integrates both static pages and server-side rendering (SSR), offers an optimal balance of speed and flexibility. Static pages, provided via the CDN, guarantee fast delivery and reduce the server load. At the same time, SSR enables dynamic and personalized content to be displayed in real-time, which is great for a fast preview of CMS changes. As a result, the website not only remains highly responsive and secure but is flexible to current requirements and dynamic content delivery.

We integrated solutions like Salesforce Service Cloud for customer service, Umantis for HR management, and Cituro for booking management, providing seamless support for operational requirements. This flexible, high-performance architecture helps Ricola react quickly to changes in the market and continuously expand the platform.

The updated website seamlessly integrates with Shopify, enabling a smooth customer purchasing process. This was essential to enable Ricola to expand its D2C product offerings  and support the mission to deliver the delight of its drops to everyone, everyday, everywhere.

Using APIs, Ricola can deliver content to multiple channels, providing users with a consistent brand experience across the website and mobile devices. The new platform also supports multiple languages and markets, with global and local content clearly managed separately. The flexible content management system allows content to be easily adapted to the specific needs of individual markets without compromising brand identity. With the integration of third-party apps such as forms, maps, shop, store locator, Ricola ensures efficiency and consistency in global content distribution and management.

Together, the flexible headless architecture and seamless Shopify integration create a scalable digital platform. This enables efficient management of global content plus easy implementation of local customizations—laying a strong foundation for Ricola’s digital future.

Localization for up to 11 markets and counting ensures Ricola’s brand narrative remains consistent worldwide while addressing the unique needs of each market, striking a balance between global presence and local flexibility.

A key factor in the project’s rapid success was the close collaboration with the DEPT® team. Our cross-office teamwork enabled Ricola to leverage a scalable team with the same values and workflows. This combination of local presence and regional scalability facilitated efficient problem-solving and record-speed resource management.