How smarter global age gates increased conversion in one week for Diageo

Diageo is one of the world's largest producers of spirits and beers, with over 200 brands in their portfolio - including Talisker, Tanqueray, and Guinness.

When a global age gate initiative was brought in to prevent under 18s from entering alcoholic beverage websites, Diageo knew they needed to respond fast with a lean solution that could be rolled out efficiently across all brands and territories.

Although Diageo already had age gates in place, they were overly complex and achieved low conversion rates. A new solution was urgently needed: one that was fast to deploy anywhere in the world, but which was also more intuitive for customers.

A third party was enlisted to help - but delivery quickly became blocked. Unforeseen challenges with data and technology, coupled with the complexities of rolling the gates out globally, forced the project to a standstill.

Needing to get to done fast, Diageo instead turned to AND Digital to:

• Accelerate successful delivery of the age gates.
• Provide essential upskilling in digital product delivery - to help ensure Diageo would never be over reliant on third parties again.

Co-locating with Diageo, we initially created two compliant age gate white-label designs that could quickly be tested with users. Following A/B testing with a pilot brand, the preferred option was then deployed on a small selection of Diageo’s branded websites - allowing for further testing and refinement.

Now fully responsive, the new gates had fewer input fields - which reduced customer completion time significantly. Automatic detection of language and country also improved CX and made rapid deployment across territories possible.

To roll the age gate out globally, we worked closely with Diageo’s extensive global stakeholder network - including teams from Toronto, Brazil, and China - to synchronise and deploy the new solution.

The impact of the work was immediate:

• Conversion across microsites increased by 18% within one week of the new age gates going live.
• The simplified experience optimised configuration, deployment and operational processes, meaning each microsite could be deployed at speed.
• Internally, AND digital championed the value of an empowered, cross-functional Scrum team, demonstrating that Agile could integrate into Diageo’s more traditional IT delivery model.