Relaunch 2015
My Role: External lead concepter, IA & UX
Summary: Prefa is one of the leading companies for aluminium roofs, facades and complete systems and sells worldwide. The main challenge in this project was to find a way to adress 3 completely different target groups in 21 different countries while using just one template set.
For this project I got hired from Webguerillas Munich, which are now called Territory-Webguerillas. I joined the team after they won the pitch, so I started off from a pitchabel concept which suddenly crashed into technical reality ;-)
The task: Reorganize the whole company website according to the target groups and include the product catalogue. Do this for 21 countries, maintained through one new CMS from austria.
Step 1: main concept
After diving into the wide ocean of aluminium roofs and facades, I explored the whole depth of existing content and tried to understand the business and its target groups, which are three.
At the time as the pitch was won, the the main design ideas were already visualized, I had to come up with a "matching" IA concept, that supports the ideas of the pitch as well makes sense to guide users through this complex topic. As the content stays always the same, I had the idea of "three perspectives" which symbolized the three target groups. Advantage: one template, filled with fitting information for each of them, easy to handle for editors.
Step 2: integration of the product catalogue
One main task was it, to integrate the product catalogue (which was a print catalogue before and it existed an external database which we had to include....) into the new system.
We tried out different ways of entering into the catalogue and ended up with "filtering" the products by categories, which are understandable for every person of the target group.
Step 3: Evolving product detail page and templates. modules, elements for each template (just a selection)
General: The main navigation and with it the whole content is structured according to the target group "Builders&Restorers", "Installers" or "Architects & Planners", the product catalogue and news are universal for all target groups. According to the type of person the user feels associated and clicks, the matching content gets displayed. So all informations are visible from the "users perspective" and make sense to him/her. Furthermore, the inhouse teams of Prefa are able to generate good content for each target group, country and language according to their team expertiese.
With the relaunch we started off with the german language, followed up by the english version. Bit by bit the other languages were added.
Challenges: jumping into an idealized pitch concept which faced reality. Implementing existing external database into a new responsive website, think of 21 countries ("What is the longest phrase we have?"), the language role out, understand the complexity of the product and the needs of three different but similar important target groups.
Result: today, April 19, my work is still online and works exactly the same way as I defined. Check it out: www.prefa.de or .at. or choose any other country.
Time: we did concept, wireframing and design including first implementations in approx. 6 weeks. Ofcourse implementation of the whole new cms took longer.
Thanks to: the webguerilla Julian Joppig for trusting in me and provided me with best information he could get, very good communication and the good team approach while leading the whole team.