Emakina Academy #13 : Betafence Website

Betafence Website

Philip AchtenThe Reference

Betafence Website

About Betafence

• Leader in the fencing industry

• More than 125 years of exellence

• € 500 million TO in 2008

• 2.000 employees

• 13 plants in 12 countries

• 25 sales offices & agencies

• Customers in more than 100 countries

Betafence Website

Challenge (1)

• Betafence builds and sells an incredible range of products

Residential applications (e.g. fencing systems for gardens)

Farming products (hunting grounds, horticulture…)

Industrial & public sector (access controls, detection systems…)

Welded mesh for industry (glass reinforcement, pipelines…)

→ How is it possible to present such a wide catalogue in a coherent, yet user-friendly, interface ?

Betafence Website

Challenge (2)

• Betafence had a lot of trouble with the previous website

• Impossible to operate in "Internet-time" and with "Internet dynamics"

• Decentralized content input and translation issues

• Potentially risky lock-in by in-house, proprietary platform & tools

• Hidden costs

Betafence Website

Key Objectives

• Build a world class corporate website that fulfils the following missions:

1. Strengthen Betafence’s worldwide Internet presence

2. Serve the information needs of the target groups

* Professional prospects* Residential prospects * Prescribers * Direct customers* Indirect customers

3. Provide decentralized content management with the implementation of Sitecore as Content Management solution

Betafence Website

Why Sitecore ?

• .Net technology

• Already used by large accounts

• Excellent content editing features

Web-based Page Editor (in site editing) Content Editor & Preview

Flexible workflow (Workbox)

Multi-lingual SEO-friendly

Allows communication department to manage the site and leverage decentralized content input and translation

Betafence Website

Sitecore : CMS & Application Platform

Betafence Website

Making the catalogue more user-friendly (1)

• As we already emphasized, guiding the customers through the products catalogue is a key issue for Betafence

• Sometimes, you know the purpose of the product... but not the product itself

• The Reference imagined a brand new navigation with four entry doors: browse the catalogue by application areas, by product group, by “full text” (search box) or by using an interactive form (“narrow down” approach)

Betafence Website

Betafence Website

Search Results

Betafence Website

Compare Results

Betafence Website

Making the catalogue more user-friendly (2)

• The Reference also created an online specification generator called “Specify Me”

• This interactive feature helps prescribers to find the best suited product in a 3-steps process and download the technical drawings, brochure pages and RFP

• Thanks to the Ajax technology, the interface provides a desktop-like experience (no page reload)

Betafence Website

Betafence Website

Betafence Website

Betafence Website

Betafence Website

International rollout (1)

• Currently released in UK & Benelux

• Next phase: Italy & Poland

• In total: about 15 languages including Chinese, Turkish, Lithuanian...

• Betafence needed an agile platform to easily add a new country or language. Sitecore offers the following key concepts for this:

Country/language extensibility Content reuse Workflow Translation

Betafence Website

International rollout (2)

• Sitecore provides a versatile framework for managing multiple countries & languages

An entire language tree can be copied Easy switching between languages Translation view A content repository is used for reusing shared content such as the product catalogue

Betafence Website

Betafence Website

Business Benefit

• Robust platform to manage the same content at a worldwide level

• Easy deployment for each subsidiary

• State-of-the-art catalogue positioning Betafence as an innovative brand and a key actor in its sector

• The catalogue is a business generator as it provides a comprehensive and intuitive overview of the products made by Betafence

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Thank You !Any Questions ?