To mark its move into electromobility, a German automaker has redesigned and technically upgraded its website. Among other things, this affects the configurators, the dealer search function, and the contact forms for the parent brand, including commercial vehicles. The new website went live across Europe in September 2019, with America and the rest of the world to follow by mid-2020. Consileon is helping to integrate the group’s foreign subsidiaries and partners into its digital marketing in this multi-project. Due to the rapid pace of technological progress, the website’s functions and content need to be regularly adapted.
Flagship project
The relaunch of the website is regarded within the Group as a beacon project for an agile way of working.
Given the success and the technically innovative approach, other specialist areas, departments, and project teams are interested in integrating their modules into the website based on microservices. Many opportunities are emerging here to combine added value for end customers with synergy effects within the Group. Among others, the following services lend themselves to this:
- Used car search
- Demand configurator
- Vehicle visualizer
- Range calculator
- Charging stations
The iterative-incremental process model in the project leans heavily on Scrum. The motto is to recognize errors quickly and learn from them. This is by no means a matter of course because large companies are generally less agile and organized in silos.
After the specification of a minimum viable product (MVP), the functional scope is successively expanded in two-week development rounds (sprints). To maximize user-friendliness, the MVP development was preceded by extensive testing in usability labs, including A/B evaluation by real representatives of the target groups. The test persons were also allowed to assess the individual product increments before they were implemented.
User in focus
The focus of the conception, specification, and realization of the web apps is on the needs of the target groups. What is useful to them also serves to create value for the company. The requirements were prioritized according to this criterion. The user-centric approach represents a conscious departure from the sometimes technology-loving process models of the past, in which customer benefits often played only a secondary role.
The new apps are being used in all sales regions in both the Commercial Vehicles and Passenger Cars divisions of the Group. This means that the differing legal and technical requirements of the individual importers or sales companies have to be met, which increases the complexity of development and rollout planning. In addition, the consultants‘ intercultural competence, empathy, and communication skills are in demand when working with the stakeholders in the individual rollout countries.
