The Challenge

Creating a consistent online and in-restaurant experience.

On The Border Mexican Grill & Cantina was founded in 1982 in Dallas by a few friends wanting to share freshly prepared Tex-Mex and great margaritas with the world. Today there are more than 160 On The Border restaurants in the United States. You can even find their famous fajitas at international locations as far away as Egypt and South Korea.

With their famous table-side guacamole, margaritas worth their salt, and booming patios, On The Border (OTB) is passionate about sharing a love for Mexican food, spirits, and fun. Their goal is for every guest to experience the energy and spirit of celebration that is core to the On The Border family.

Over time, On The Border’s digital presence began to lack consistency with their modern and fresh in-restaurant experience. Originally built on a fragile architecture, ontheborder.com began to slow, preventing customers from ordering online. Additionally, the website reached a threshold that made it difficult for the OTB marketing team to update content without significant assistance from developers.

On The Border hired Credera to create a digital guest experience, including the supporting technology infrastructure, to provide the same consistent, high-quality experience guests receive when visiting On The Border restaurants.

The Solution

Translating insights into a mobile-first approach.

Credera began by interviewing key stakeholders to gain a clear understanding of On The Border’s business and goals.  Simultaneously, the team worked to quickly remediate all critical issues impacting user experience on ontheborder.com.

Once the immediate issues were triaged, Credera and On The Border launched an envision phase to identify and recommend key performance, user experience, and brand alignment enhancements. One of Credera’s main recommendations was to take a mobile-first approach by redesigning ontheborder.com to be mobile responsive, fully aligned with OTB’s current brand, and able to scale with their future digital strategy.

Over the course of three months, the Credera team completely re-platformed and redesigned the On The Border website, culminating in a successful launch on Cinco De Mayo—one of OTB’s biggest celebrations. A modularized, service-oriented architecture was utilized to create a best-of-breed, lightweight platform that is scalable and allows OTB’s marketing team to easily manage the brand’s online presence.

The Results

Growing customer engagement and online sales.

Improvements and enhancements to On The Border’s digital capabilities and online experiences are ongoing.

Initial results include:

• Increased Online Sales – After implementation, catering and to-go orders increased both in revenue and overall count.

• Improved Brand Alignment – The newly designed website now matches OTB’s vibrant and polished brand goals. Additionally, the easy-to-navigate website admin empowers marketing and area sales managers to successfully create and deliver personalized and localized content without external assistance.

• Enhances Customer Engagement – On The Border saw an increase in customer visits. Additional enhancements, including a geo locator and an online ordering ecosystem consistent with the new website, decreased guest confusion and provided easier ordering.

• Improved Web Analytics and Performance – Ontheborder.com now performs 30% faster. Cloud hosting through Azure allows for quick and easy scaling as needed. Additionally, thanks to the optimized responsive design, the percentage of mobile visitors significantly increased.