Corporate Website, Career Portal, and Internationalization for GEZE
Test first, then launch: How a B2B website becomes user-centered
The new digital brand world of GEZE
Together with the international marketing team of the family-owned company from Leonberg, we executed the relaunch of the national and international web presences in an agile process. We pre-checked our concept in extensive usability tests in our own laboratory.
We have been supporting the company as a digital lead agency since 2016 and accompany the company long-term within the framework of a Continous Relaunch conceptually, technically, and content-wise.
Technologies:
TYPO3, Frontend
Our Services
About GEZE
GEZE is the world's leading provider of products, system solutions, and services related to doors and windows. The company offers a comprehensive product range of door, window, and security technology and significantly advances the digital networking of building automation.
Task: Complex Relaunch
The extensive products, solutions, and services that GEZE offers should be newly staged online. Investors, planners, architects, processors, end users – the visitors to the GEZE website are international and heterogeneous. Each of them should be able to find their way optimally on the new website and quickly access needed information. Promoting the service concept was the highest goal.
GEZE supports its customers in all phases of the product lifecycle: consulting, solutions, installation, after-sales, etc. This resulted in a special significance for the information architecture. In parallel, the career section should be revised and GEZE presented as a strong employer in a new light.
At the beginning of the collaboration, we faced a very extensive and challenging project. Thanks to very good cooperation, excellent project management, and everyone's efforts, the first release of the website could be realized in a relatively short project duration. We are very pleased with our new website and even more excited about the further collaboration in which we want to achieve much more together.
Before implementation: User tests
We consistently place user needs at the center. In the GEZE project, we fulfilled this promise through user tests in our UX laboratory. Planners, architects, dealers, operators – actual users of the GEZE website – were invited to test our concept in advance. This allowed us to gain important insights into the behavior of the users and their requirements for the website.
In this way, the websites offer various user groups a tailored brand experience. Tools like the product finder or retailer search make navigation through the complex content easier for them.
GEZE Websites – International Rollout
Through a worldwide sales and service network, GEZE offers its international customers reliable technical support and excellent on-site service. To provide the 32 subsidiaries in the countries with a modern web presence featuring all the new corporate website features, the structure and design of the new website were also rolled out internationally. This gives the subsidiaries a strong digital sales tool in hand. Through effective product staging, the international websites act as brand showcases in local markets and provide digital services to customers on-site in their local languages.
Global Content: Centralized Control and Regional Independence
The challenge of the international rollout was to set up the website and information architecture in such a way that global content such as product information or references is available for all pages in the future. At the same time, individual localization should be possible. To do this, a central content pool was created in the TYPO3 content management system (CMS), which was translated into all 23 languages. All global content is maintained there once and distributed to the various countries through page referencing. If a global content changes, it only needs to be maintained in one place to be displayed on 26 websites. Localized content, on the other hand, can be created independently by local editors. A simple role and rights system allows local editors to see and edit only the areas relevant to them. The marketing department from Leonberg releases the local content and creates all global content.
Translation Handling
The translation handling was a central challenge of the project. To translate the content into 23 languages, the pages were exported as XML files via the l10mngr plugin of TYPO3. The files translated by an agency were then imported back into TYPO3 and finalized by the editors with a few clicks. Product information, on the other hand, was centrally translated in the product information management system (PIM) and distributed on the website via an interface.
A modern digital media landscape has emerged that uniformly conveys the GEZE brand worldwide. This considers regional peculiarities as well as centralized content from the headquarters in Leonberg.
Storytelling: Lively content about products, solutions, and people
Like many of our B2B customers, GEZE faces the challenge of making complex products and solutions tangible from the perspective of the target groups and explaining them in detail. The Discover section we developed offers a lively content entry into the GEZE world. Here, users receive backgrounds to the brand, new products, and important events in varied journalistic formats. The employees, who make GEZE what it is, also have their say here. Detailed references illustrate that GEZE is involved in numerous projects worldwide: From a sophisticated hotel complex in Dubai to elegant shop spaces in Milan to a pioneering clinic project in Oxford. Furthermore, GEZE positions itself with an ambitious theme pool as an expert for the decisive industry trends and solutions. And of course, all Explore contributions connect users with further product and service pages or with information about the company.
Employer Branding: A new and lively career portal
For the new career portal, we sharpened the GEZE employer brand in a series of workshops, defined the target groups, analyzed candidate journeys, formulated employer value propositions, worked on tonalities, and much more. Based on this solid foundation, our Berlin and Munich content teams then jointly developed all the content. This includes, in addition to information about the employer GEZE, target group entry points, or the application process, the blog "What's Happening with Us." Here we present the working world and the people at GEZE in multifaceted formats, providing emotional and authentic insights into the family business from Leonberg. Also important: the corporate and career websites are strategically interconnected. This creates an optimal user experience for interested parties and applicants.
Editorial support and marketing automation
Since the start of the operational phase, we have been supporting GEZE in the implementation and further development of the content strategy. We provide the customer's communications department with reports, feature stories, interviews, technical articles, or whitepapers on various topics. We also develop tailored content for the Marketing automation-tool from GEZE. From simple newsletters, multi-step invitation mailings to fairs or training sessions, to highly complex lead nurturing and gated content campaigns—we deliver measurable and personalized content for a wide variety of target groups. We also participate in the weekly editorial conference. Here, GEZE and the involved partners plan the upcoming topics and use an editorial plan that we co-developed. This results in goal-oriented content marketing.
Your contact person
- Martin Bugl
Project Managementsynaigy
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