Responses by Bonnie MacTavish, head of experience strategy; Ahmed Meer, head of innovation; and Christine Sultana, managing director, Nightjar.

Background: Two Good is a Sydney-based social enterprise whose mission is to help women affected by domestic violence and homelessness re-enter paid employment. Its business operates two streams: “Good Food,” a catering business, and “Good Things,” a retail goods arm.

At Good Food, commercial kitchens are staffed by women with lived experience of domestic violence and homelessness, helping them rebuild their sense of self-worth and putting them back on the path to paid employment. They prepare healthy meals like salads, sandwiches and gourmet cafe treats as well as large-scale catering for events. Good Things is a range of luxurious personal care items such as shampoo, soap, candles and room sprays, which are also handcrafted by women that Two Good empowers to believe in themselves again. Every purchase a person makes from the range, be it a chef-created salad or a cozy woven blanket, contributes to these same items being shared with a women’s shelter.

There are multiple target audiences for this platform—firstly, retail customers looking to purchase gifts or items for their homes. For this audience, we wanted to showcase the quality of Two Good’s quality products and hero the stories of the women it helps every day. That way, shoppers can see the tangible impact of their purchases.

There is also the B2B audience for these products, although they are purchasing on a much larger scale and with products not available to the general public—for example, a facilities manager looking to purchase hundreds of liters of refillable hand soap. For this target audience, although the impact Two Good has is still important, efficiency is key; these customers need to submit their wholesale orders quickly.

A key audience for the platform is also the corporate partners who work with Two Good, supporting its initiatives and wanting to report back to stakeholders with the impact their support is having.

Design core: Two Good saw that, to empower women, it needed to have a strong voice and fight the status quo. So, we took cues from the bold brand typography and logo. Our design concept is reminiscent of protest signs: it’s direct and honest while maintaining an open appeal through positive language.

A core custom-experience pillar for us to focus on was the importance of local stories. Inspired by the sense of community Two Good is founded upon, the design concept is carried across the site to hero powerful images and big quotes from the women Two Good helps to find their way simply by believing in them. Video content throughout the site shows the raw, heartfelt messages that convey real impact better than any text could. Inspired by the sense of community Two Good is founded upon, every product category or product page shares a user’s impact and reminds people that small choices can make big differences.

Favorite details: With a brief that reimagines the current ecosystem, this was an exciting revolution for an inspirational organization. We architected a platform that automated several systems, removing manual upload of CSV files and integrating the new ERP with our e-commerce layer. The result syncs both the catering and retail arms of the business, streamlines internal processes, and showcases the handmade products and impact the organization has on women in need and their local communities.

Research with potential customers revealed that the product quality was still a primary consideration to drive purchases. Accordingly, the new design showcases the craftsmanship of the handmade range through larger image tiles, new product content featuring ingredients and video content describing the process, proving Two Good’s products stand up to any of its luxury competitors.

Challenges: Increasing back-end efficiency through the integration of a new tech stack while increasing retail sales on the front end. We had to create a wholesale login that had not just wholesale only prices but ones displayed by specific businesses. Only certain products, such as the bulk 1-kg bottles of hand sanitizer, would appear within the wholesale login.

Navigation structure: We wanted to keep the navigation as simple and focused as possible. With only three options visible in the main navigation—Shop, Catering and Donate—it helps the user explore the Two Good product offerings first and foremost. The brief was really to amp up the e-commerce experience. More information about the organization and its impact can be revealed by tapping the hamburger, but the e-commerce experience is always kept front and center.

Technology: We built the Two Good platform on a headless architecture as we do with all Nightjar builds. We used Sanity.io as our CMS, BigCommerce as our headless e-commerce platform and Next.js as our front-end framework. It’s all hosted on a Vercel infrastructure.

Special technical features: We’re proud of our custom BigCommerce to Sanity sync!