KTR + Magnolia
“The new website creates a noticeable improvement in the services and usability of the website for visitors.”
KTR Systems is a German manufacturer of clutches, brakes, cooling systems and hydraulic components for mechanical and plant engineering. The company has been based in Rheine, Westphalia, since the 1950s. The company not only sells numerous standard products, but also produces around 20,000 new developments and variants every year. Around 1,100 employees and 90 sales partners work for the company worldwide, which has 24 subsidiaries of its own.
The challenge
Looking through the users’ lens
The current digital landscape requires that businesses deliver meaningful customer experiences. However, doing so with a wide product range across international markets requires a more powerful platform, which is exactly why KTR chose Magnolia.
In order to drive more digital sales, lead generation needed to be optimized and the media landscape restructured. The basis for this was a new, future-proof and scalable infrastructure for all of KTR's digital channels. In order to better understand their needs, KTR and interactivetools workshopped the key priorities they needed to succeed, landing on: communication goals, employer branding, optimization of product integration and the presentation of region-specific information. With this data, Magnolia’s job was to unify the key areas and combine the individual solutions into a single digital platform, all while delivering an improved user experience.
The next step was to further improve the customer journey by redesigning the product pages and optimizing them with a leaner structure and strategic product links. The visual presentation layer would also receive a makeover.
The solution
A powerful platform for everyone
The flexibility a headless platform such as Magnolia offers makes light work of linking all of KTR’s services and URLs under the umbrella of ktr.com. It enables a much cleaner solution that is far easier to manage, while the switch to cloud hosting immediately improved the technical performance to create a better user experience. With Viamedici supporting the connection to the PIM system, authors can effortlessly maintain the product pages while ensuring easy navigation for end-users. Lastly, Magnolia’s powerful localization support means a native a corporate portal could be made available in different languages. Using a single-tree setup, all texts are maintained in multiple languages and displayed on the various country pages of the corporate website.
Going all the way
Essential to this new customer experience was the introduction of a native customer portal for KTR. Dubbed “myktr”, the portal let’s customers access various content, downloadables, applications and services. This meant everything from whitepapers to catalogs to webinars needed to be integrated into KTR’s media landscape. This is where Magnolia’s headless approach really showed its value, enabling a seamless integration of all media and making it readily available across all company channels via the portal.
This initial phase lasted several months, during which the target for the information architecture of the future DXP was developed using the newly achieved digital strategy. Additionally, a roadmap was drawn up that specifies exactly how the further digitalization will proceed. This will be implemented during the course of a continuous relaunch in the coming years.
The result
The project is already delivering an impressively high return on investment for KTR. The new Digital Experience Platform ensures that customer-centric content and services can be provided centrally in all required languages, contributing to an overall more personal and emotional brand experience. Lead generation and conversion have been significantly improved and all content is maintained centrally in the DXP. The “myktr” portal adds an extra dimension and the systems are scalable and technically independent, ensuring a seamless and consistent customer experience at all touchpoints in the future.
