Building a Digital Home for Kenya’s Retail Giant
Overview
Naivas is one of Kenya’s most recognisable retail brands, with a nationwide network of stores and a business spanning retail, e-commerce, loyalty, partnerships, careers, sustainability and community impact.
As the organisation continued to evolve, its corporate website needed to do more than provide basic company information.
It needed to communicate the scale of the business, tell the Naivas story, showcase its people and impact, connect stakeholders with the organisation and provide customers with practical services — all within a single, coherent digital experience.
Clever helped design and develop a corporate digital platform that brings these different facets of Naivas together.
Services: Web Development · UX/UI · Information Architecture · Digital Experience
Platform: WordPress
Industry: Retail · FMCG · Corporate
The Challenge
A business of Naivas’ scale has no shortage of stories to tell.
There is the history of the organisation, its growing store network, leadership team, people, suppliers, customers, loyalty programme, sustainability initiatives, awards, careers and community impact.
The challenge was turning all of this information into a digital experience that feels clear rather than overwhelming.
The website needed to serve multiple audiences at once:
- Customers looking for stores, services and support.
- Prospective employees exploring careers.
- Suppliers and business partners looking to work with Naivas.
- Stakeholders interested in the organisation and its impact.
- Media and the wider public looking for company information and news.
The challenge was therefore not simply to build a corporate website.
It was to create a digital front door for a complex organisation.
The Approach
We approached the project around a simple principle:
Make a large organisation easy to understand.
Rather than organising the website purely around internal departments, we structured the experience around the information different audiences actually need.
The result is a content ecosystem that moves users between:
Discover → Understand → Engage
Visitors can discover who Naivas is, understand its story and capabilities, and then take action — whether that means finding a store, exploring a career opportunity, learning about partnerships, contacting the business or discovering the services available to customers.
This approach also created a foundation that allows the website to grow alongside the organisation.
The Solution
A central digital home for Naivas
The new corporate platform brings together the key dimensions of the Naivas business under one digital experience.
The website communicates the company’s vision, mission and purpose while introducing visitors to its history, values, leadership and nationwide presence. Naivas currently describes its vision as becoming the consumer brand of choice in East Africa, with its mission centred on providing an affordable, world-class shopping experience.
This establishes the corporate story before users move into more specific areas of the business.
Making the Naivas story accessible
Naivas has more than three decades of history.
Rather than presenting that history as a conventional wall of text, the website turns the organisation’s journey into a visual timeline — taking visitors from its beginnings in 1990 through major milestones including its expansion into Nairobi, the evolution of the Naivas brand, the introduction of new store formats and the opening of its 100th store.
The result is a corporate history that is easier to explore and more engaging to experience.
Designing for multiple audiences
The website serves considerably more than customers.
Dedicated experiences allow different audiences to find relevant information without having to navigate the entire corporate site.
Customers can access services, store information, loyalty information and support.
Job seekers can explore careers and the Naivas Graduate Training Programme.
Suppliers and partners can learn about the organisation’s partnership ecosystem.
Stakeholders can explore the company’s leadership, impact, sustainability and corporate information.
This audience-led approach keeps the overall experience focused while allowing the breadth of the organisation to remain visible.
A people-first corporate experience
People are central to the Naivas story.
The corporate website gives the organisation’s leadership team a dedicated platform, introducing executives and senior leaders alongside their respective areas of responsibility and perspectives on the business.
The careers experience similarly positions Naivas as an organisation where people can build long-term careers, highlighting career growth, collaboration, impact and its graduate training programme.
This shifts the corporate website from being purely informational to becoming a tool for employer brand and stakeholder engagement.
Connecting the digital and physical network
For a retailer with more than 110 stores across Kenya, location is a critical part of the customer experience.
The website incorporates a store locator that allows visitors to search for nearby Naivas branches and explore store information.
This creates a direct bridge between the digital experience and Naivas’ physical retail network.
The website effectively becomes the starting point for a customer journey that can end inside a Naivas store.
Bringing services into one experience
Naivas offers customers more than traditional supermarket shopping.
The corporate website brings together services including the Naivas Loyalty Programme, electronics financing and delivery services.
This gives users a clearer understanding of the broader Naivas ecosystem while creating direct pathways into the services they need.
The Zawadi Loyalty Programme, for example, is positioned as a major part of the customer relationship, with millions of members benefiting from rewards, offers and digital engagement.
Corporate storytelling and impact
The website also creates a platform for communicating the organisation’s wider impact.
Naivas’ corporate story extends into sustainability, community engagement, governance, supplier relationships and industry recognition.
The platform provides dedicated spaces for these stories, allowing the organisation to communicate not only what it sells, but also what it stands for and the impact it creates.
The website currently highlights an ecosystem of more than 2,000 suppliers and a growing workforce, alongside its sustainability and community commitments.
A living newsroom
A corporate website should not feel static.
The Naivas platform incorporates a newsroom for company announcements, campaigns, milestones and stories.
This gives the organisation an ongoing publishing channel through which it can communicate developments and keep the corporate experience current. Recent content includes store expansion, campaigns, partnerships and recognition such as the Superbrands certification.
The Technology
WordPress
WordPress provides the content management foundation for the corporate platform, giving the Naivas team the flexibility to manage and update a broad range of content across the website.
Structured Content Architecture
With multiple audiences and a large volume of corporate information, content architecture was central to the project.
The platform separates key areas such as the company story, people, services, careers, stores, news, partnerships, sustainability and customer support while maintaining a consistent experience throughout.
Responsive Digital Experience
The platform was developed to provide a consistent experience across desktop, tablet and mobile devices, ensuring that corporate information and customer-facing services remain accessible regardless of device.
Scalable Content Platform
The website was structured to accommodate ongoing growth — from new stores and leadership updates to news, campaigns, careers, partnerships and corporate initiatives.
This means the website can evolve with the organisation rather than becoming another digital asset that requires a rebuild every time the business changes.
The Outcome
The result is a corporate digital experience that reflects the scale and ambition of Naivas.
Instead of functioning as a static company profile, the website brings together brand, people, services, stories and stakeholder engagement within one platform.
Customers can find practical information.
Employees and prospective talent can explore opportunities.
Suppliers and partners can understand the organisation.
Stakeholders can explore its history, leadership and impact.
And Naivas has a flexible digital platform through which it can continue telling its story as the organisation grows.
What We Built
Corporate Digital Experience
A central digital home representing the Naivas brand and organisation.
Information Architecture
A structured content ecosystem designed around multiple audiences and use cases.
Company Storytelling
Interactive and visual storytelling that brings the Naivas journey to life.
People & Careers
Dedicated experiences for leadership, employees, job seekers and graduate talent.
Store Discovery
A digital bridge between Naivas’ online presence and its nationwide physical store network.
Customer Services
Centralised access to loyalty, delivery, electronics financing and customer support.
Corporate Communications
A newsroom and content ecosystem for sharing company news, milestones, campaigns and achievements.
Scalable CMS
A WordPress-based content platform designed to support ongoing organisational growth.
The Clever Take
A corporate website for a business of this scale isn’t a brochure.
It’s infrastructure.
It needs to communicate the brand, serve customers, attract talent, support partnerships, tell the company’s story and keep pace with a constantly changing organisation.
For Naivas, we built a digital experience designed to do exactly that.
One organisation.
Multiple audiences.
One connected digital experience.
Built by Clever.
