GF Smith Digital Strategy

GF Smith is a long-established British paper company, supplying high-quality creative and specialist papers to designers, brands, printers and creative professionals worldwide. Despite their market position, less than 1% of revenue was generated through digital channels.

The challenge was not simply to redesign a website, but to understand why customers weren’t buying online and how digital could better support GF Smith’s customers, internal teams and complex supply chain.

We began with a deep, evidence-led review of the existing digital experience. This included detailed UX analysis using click heatmaps, scroll depth data, session recordings and hands-on friction testing, alongside a comparison with competitor and best-in-class ecommerce experiences.

To complement quantitative insight, we conducted in-person interviews with a wide range of customers to understand real-world behaviours, frustrations and expectations when buying paper online.

In parallel, we carried out a comprehensive review of GF Smith’s underlying technical architecture, including their legacy ERP system. This allowed us to assess how digital, operational and commercial systems needed to work together to support growth.

The outcome was a 180-page digital and technical strategy that set a clear roadmap for transformation. This included UX and journey improvements, as well as a phased plan for evolving GF Smith’s ecommerce and operational capabilities.

We defined how customers could track orders in real time, how printers could be notified ahead of delivery, and how offline orders could be surfaced digitally — bringing customers from traditional channels into a richer online relationship. Notifications and storytelling features were designed to keep customers informed and engaged throughout the lifecycle of their paper.

A core part of the work was a comprehensive review of GF Smith’s underlying technology and data architecture. We assessed the limitations of their legacy ERP system (Rocket U2) and how it constrained ecommerce, product data, order visibility and customer communication.

From this, we defined a future-proof technical strategy designed to decouple systems, reduce operational friction and enable scale. This included the introduction of a dedicated product information management system (Akeneo), a modern ecommerce platform (Magento), a new CRM (Salesforce), and an integration layer to allow all systems to communicate reliably.

The strategy focused on creating a single, consistent view of products, orders and customers across channels, while allowing GF Smith to modernise incrementally rather than through high-risk replacement.

The strategy has delivered significant commercial and operational impact. GF Smith generated an additional £1.2m in online revenue, while internal efficiency improved dramatically. Manual paper order processing time dropped by 80%, customer service call volumes fell by 40%, and the website became a trusted tool for both customers and internal teams.

The result is a digital foundation that supports growth, strengthens customer relationships and modernises how GF Smith operates.