Beachbody – From infomercial to digital market leader

Beachbody’s founder, Carl Daikeler, launched The Beachbody Company back in 1998 and has been helping fitness enthusiasts stay healthy from the comfort of their own homes ever since. Beachbody provides customers with at-home exercise regimens, nutrition plans, dietary supplements, and a community of coaches and fellow fitness comrades who offer guidance and support in several countries around the world. 

The story of one user clearly illustrates the kind of deep relationship that customers have established with the brand: In 2009, Raquel, a mother, was up late into the night feeding her newborn son. On the couch with the now sleeping and swaddled baby beside her, she caught glimpses of an infomercial (remember those!) on TV. Sean T, a Beachbody fitness trainer, was on the screen selling his Insanity workout DVD set. She was suddenly alert and completely engaged. 

With the responsibility of a new baby, she knew that going to the gym was not going to happen. So, she picked up her Blackberry and made her purchase. Within a couple of weeks, she received a set of 10 DVDs, a nutrition guide, and a calendar to track her progress. Raquel has been a loyal Beachbody customer ever since. 

In today’s digital world, the retail landscape has obviously changed. Customers rarely, if ever, order DVD sets and nutrition packs through infomercials. In fact, many homes today no longer have a DVD player.

In order to stay relevant, this worldwide fitness and nutrition leader knew they’d have to update their business and go digital. 

So, in 2015, Beachbody launched their “Beachbody OnDemand,” streaming service, allowing customers to purchase an annual subscription to all workouts. In addition to their streamed content, customers could also purchase supplements like Shakeology, and nutrition plans like B2B mindset from the online store. 

Since then, the focus has been on creating a best-in-class media and e-commerce platform in their sector of the market. There are many competing products out there, such as Apple Fitness, Nike and Peloton, but Beachbody focuses on the substance and quality of their content and recommendations. They’re about ‘what’s in the box.’ 

Their trainers, nutritionists and kinesiologists are all experts, led by a research department helmed by a PhD in the field. Beachbody is trying to offer the consumer something that is going to help them reach their goals and they want to make that experience as seamless as possible.

More intuitive Search and Navigation

Executive Director Mike Drudzinski is in charge of Digital Product Management for Beachbody On Demand®. He and his team wanted to improve user’s ability to easily find fitness, nutrition and wellness content on Beachbody On Demand and give the site a more contemporary look and feel. 

The typical client is a woman aged 35-45, living in the US. She is middle class and not tech savvy. Creating a seamless user experience makes it easier for this client to choose coaches, move from one fitness stage to another, and ultimately, look better and feel better about themselves. 

The Beachbody team were looking for a way to customize how they managed filters and facets so that customer navigation could be refined in a way that was more intuitive. They wanted a system that would enable auto suggestions and discoverability and allow for tolerance, such as accounting for typos in the search experience. Not only did they want to create a suite of solutions for people to generate a robust client experience, but they also wanted to “get out of their way,” as Drudzinski puts it, “and make the user’s interaction with the site as frictionless as possible.” All these technical concerns were set within the overarching goal of really engaging the consumer and retaining them as a subscriber over multiple years: “We wanted people to discover the breadth of our offerings – and to take advantage of incremental revenue opportunities but also keep people in the ecosystem (retention) and discover all that Beachbody has to offer,” says Drudzinski. Beachbody had worked with other companies in the past but were not satisfied with the process or the results. With a clear set of goals in mind, it was time to move on, to a newer, more dynamic and more functional API - to a team who could do the work on time and on budget.

Improved reliability, revenue and engagement

The Beachbody Technology team contacted Algolia in 2020, looking for help with Beachbody on Demand and the Team Beachbody Shop sites and apps. Identity management, performance, sifting and refining through data were top-of-mind concerns, particularly given budget and time restraints. As Mike Drudzinski pointed out, “fixing these issues doesn’t have immediate ROI so how do you prioritize?” 

This is where the expertise at Algolia made a big difference. The ability to change the configuration without developer intervention made things much easier. With limited time and resources and time to make changes, the functionality and flexibility of the Algolia console saved time and energy. 

With the Algolia Dashboard, Beachbody can access data directly, pinpoint certain issues and work the appropriate teams to get the issue fixed without having to have a developer’s knowledge and expertise. They have access and visibility. What’s particularly helpful is that it no longer takes weeks to resolve issues. 

Recommendation and ideas from Algolia have helped Beachbody create a more powerful experience for customers. As a result of the work they’ve done together, Drudzinski sees Algolia as a strategic business partner, not just a software provider. 

The results have been significant: in the last year they’ve had more than one million search results that have been clicked on, increasing the page views across multiple content/product categories. As Drudzinski points out, “This has meant thousands of incremental orders… which translate to significant incremental revenue.” 

“It’s been a good experience and we will continue to work together!”

“Algolia gave us the ability to customize the experience without it being a three-month project every time,” says Drudzinski. “The fact that it’s relatively easy to do with Algolia is a game changer!”