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| In the spring of 2009, the Becker brand planned the relaunch of its online portal mybecker.com. The web structure needed to be optimized and expanded with new, user-friendly features. Zeitwerk GmbH in Ettlingen, Germany, won the bid for the redesign. | ||
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| The automobile navigation pioneer Becker, a brand of Harman/Becker Automotive Systems GmbH, is combining tradition with progress and moving with the times, as the brand has also clearly shown over the last two years. With a new web presentation, Becker is modernizing its online presence and thereby creating enhanced value for its customers. |
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| > 10-language web portal > 12 different country versions > Web Shop with SAP Connectivity > Virtual Product Advisor > Store Locator > 3D Product Experience > Newsletter for all country versions > ContentComposer Media Management System |
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| > Project Oversight/Coordinating/Consulting > Design and Development > Content/Editing Development > Skin Programming > CMS/SAP System Connectivity |
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| > Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Advertising (SEA) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) > Email Marketing > Consulting/Training > Online PR > Social Media Marketing |
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| “We wanted to offer our customers an even better online experience, where they could get all the information they need while at the same time easily locating the features to upgrade their particular navigation devices,” says Marion Sick, Online Marketing Specialist at Becker. “For us, customer satisfaction is an absolute priority. And since we were technically capable of offering downloads and content to allow everyone to customize their Becker navigation system to suit their individual tastes and needs, we naturally wanted to incorporate this in practice as well.” | ||
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| “The objective of the relaunch was to re-structure the portal-style websites and promote the Becker brand. Additionally, the website colors needed to be optimized and adapted to the modified emphasis of Becker’s classic red and white color concept. It was also necessary to define and implement new style guides on developing Becker websites. To demonstrate that Becker is also focusing its attention on lifestyle products, a new persuasive graphic style was required. The goal of the new presentation was to reflect the classic, high-quality commitment of the brand in the individual character of Becker products on the Internet,” says Marion Sick. In addition to the redesign, the main focus of the relaunch was the development and integration of the product advisor. The extensive product offering for such a wide variety of target groups represented a huge challenge. Another component of the project was the integration of three new products and the connectivity of the accessory shop to the Becker ERP/SAP processes. The entire project was to be implemented in three months. The contract for this project, which involved strategic and concept consulting, design, technical implementation and hosting, once again went to the cross-media communication service provider Zeitwerk GmbH from Ettlingen, with whom Becker had already successfully collaborated in the past. |
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| Initially, the product advisor and product comparison software were developed – both of which are key components of mybecker.com customer communication. “Since the product advisor is very complex, it was important for the Becker online administrators to be able to configure all the products without any programming knowledge,” explains Christa Brand, Zeitwerk project manager. All Becker products can be compared online across 27 product features to come up with a customized device recommendation from the Becker product offering. Features like an MP3 player, traffic message channel (TMC), Bluetooth connectivity, and many more can be integrated into the comparison. These product features can be modularly modified using the integrated CMS. This is made possible by using web-based input masks, which Zeitwerk reworked during the course of the redesign. The elements of the information architecture, like information tables, templates and layouts, were modified. The content remained identical. In short, the entire look was changed and the website was structurally improved without the need of creating new content or text. Visitors also now rarely have to deal with the annoyance of scrolling. For the visual redesign, Zeitwerk proposed a concept that fit the brand. Here, Zeitwerk had the idea of assigning symbolic icons to the individual product features, which also made internationalizing the portal easier. Short project turnaround thanks to modular design of existing templates After finalizing the layout, Zeitwerk began the technical implementation. There was a question here of whether the existing templates should be totally re-written or simply modified. Here, the Zeitwerk CMS showed its flexibility: “The modular design allows the templates to be modified without having to rework the entire structure. It was this simplification of the workflow that made such a short project life-cycle possible in the first place,” says Christa Brand. Similarly, the CMS can be used to manage Becker customer newsletters, which are part of Becker’s e-commerce offering. In the course of the redesign, Zeitwerk also reworked the newsletter’s appearance. The online publication, published in seven languages, became more graphical, moving away from the current text-heavy format to a more enticing image-oriented format on each page. |
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| Search engine optimization is an important aspect of any relaunch. On this score, Zeitwerk effectively made use of a feature of the ContentComposer that now enables even the sub-pages to be easily found by Google. “Since the relaunch, the acceptance of mybecker.com by our customers has been considerably improved. We see this, above all, in the increased number of product advisor users,” says Marion Sick. “In the first month, we saw a 6% increase in visits while page impressions even rose by 20%. On top of that, we noticed that customers were interacting more intensively with the website since they were now more likely to delve more deeply and view more pages”. |
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