BUSINESS CXO INSIGHT PROFILE
The Royal Mint has been making coins for over 1,100 years. Its digital story is far newer. When Rich Hobbs joined as Chief Information Officer almost seven years ago, from a financial services background building digital products, he saw a clear chance to support the organisation’ s growing e-commerce ambitions and knew it would take a complete platform overhaul.
What began as a stability project grew into a strategic digital program built on Optimizely One. Hobbs and his lean team built it up piece by piece, starting with CMS [ Content Management System ], then adding experimentation, ODP [ Optimizely Data Platform ] for data unification and DAM [ Digital Asset Management ] to create deeply personalised experiences. The flagship is Digital Collections, which gives every coin collector a journey shaped around their own collection.
The payoff is hard to argue with. During the change of monarchy, the website processed a sale every 10 seconds for three weeks with zero downtime, while AI-powered experimentation lets the small team keep refining customer journeys. Along the way they’ ve doubled web traffic, lifted conversions and grown subscriptions, with plenty of credit, as Hobbs is quick to give, to the team at Optimizely. And when there’ s‘ no noise’, when stability is simply a given, his team can spend its time on customer experience and innovation instead of firefighting, continuing to deliver for one of the longest-standing institutions in the world.
1,100 years of heritage meets modern e-commerce
The journey to hyper-personalisation
Hobbs inherited Optimizely CMS( Episerver) and immediately took the website in-house, consolidating two separate business lines into a single stable platform after years of‘ shaky’ websites.
After establishing CMS stability, the team progressively added experimentation, ODP for unified customer data and DAM for high-definition coin imagery.
The ultimate goal is hyper-personalisation through Digital Collections, segmenting customers down to one and delivering unique journeys based on each collector’ s coins.
Customers can view verified coins purchased from The Royal Mint and upload other coins they own, with plans for gamification and loyalty points.
Hobbs said:“ The aim of the modern digital journey and experience for Royal Mint customers is personalisation. Our digital collections project, which is hyper-personalisation, really segments our customer base down to one. Everybody gets a unique journey based on their coin collection.”
Why Optimizely – partnership and innovation
Hobbs chose Optimizely over competitors because of visible product growth and innovation rather than a staid‘ build it and go away’ approach.
The Royal Mint moved out of London in the 1960s to a small village just outside Cardiff in Wales. It was based in London since 886. Over the past 15 years, The Royal Mint has diversified from its core mission of making UK currency into a modern e-commerce business serving collectors and investors worldwide.
He said:“ I can see growth in Optimizely. When you look at the other providers, they have a staid kind of approach. This is your website. We can build it up. Here’ s your partner relationship. Go away. We’ ll build you something. Come to us when you need something new. What I really found with Optimizely is every year something new www. intelligentcxo. com
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