Popeyes redesigns website in digital marketing push

Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen has redesigned its Popeyes.com website as part of an ongoing effort to expand its digital engagement with customers and reinforce its Louisiana brand heritage.

The new website, last redesigned in 2006, now includes links to its YouTube and Pinterest pages, and also has buttons allowing visitors to “like” the company’s Facebook page and follow it on Twitter. The site’s navigation bar also has been restructured to be more user-friendly.

Digital media manager Karlie Lahm said the designs of Popeyes-related websites, including PopeyesFranchising.com and afce.com, and the site for the chain’s Bonafide Krewe loyalty program, also have been reworked to resemble the main site. Links to all of those websites have been placed at the bottom of the Popeyes.com page.

Website designers have changed navigation bar headings to be more easily understood by users and search engines, Lahm said. The new headings are Menu, Our Story, Join Loyalty Program, Promos, Coupons and Find a Popeyes. The navigation bar of the former web site had the headings Food, About Us, Bonafide Krewe and Locator.

The site’s home page also breaks down Popeyes’ food menu offerings into easy-to-understand categories like “Seafood” and “Tenders.”

“Before it looked more like a menu,” Lahm said.

Chief marketing officer Dick Lynch said the redesign was part of the “massive brand transformation” the company has been undergoing since 2008 with a focus on Popeyes’ Louisiana heritage. He said the new website, which was launched last week, will be the cornerstone of digital marketing initiatives going forward.

Earlier this year, Popeyes hired Campbell Mithun as its digital agency of record, and has already developed two digital marketing campaigns. The first campaign, the Mood Wing app, assessed users’ social media activity and determined whether their mood was mild or spicy. The second, promoting the return of the chain’s popular Rip’n Chick’n limited-time offer, was a plug-in that rewrote web content, changing all “’ing’s” to “’n’s.”

Lynch said in the coming months the website would have Louisiana-themed imagery in the background to reflect redesigns underway in restaurants. She added that the new website will be used this September in a campaign with a beverage partner, in which guests will receive key fobs at restaurants with codes they can enter at the website to receive food offers, “pulling them online and then driving them back into the restaurant.”

Another promotional campaign would be launched later this year, she said, but did not provide further details.

Popeyes, a subsidiary of Atlanta-based AFC Enterprises Inc., has 2,044-unit company-owned and franchised units in the U.S. and around the world.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected].
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