In early 2020, Cimpress requested our help to create the new website of Printingdeal.com validate. Both the backend and frontend of that website received a major upgrade. To mitigate both financial and organizational risks, the new website needed to be validated.

A conversion manager and data analyst from Online Dialogue complemented Drukwerkdeal's multidisciplinary team, consisting of the CMO, CTO, a CRO specialist, UX designer, data analyst, developers, customer service manager, online marketing manager and online marketers.

Check out how we made it redesign of Drukwerkdeal have validated. We give you insight into our work process, Drukwerkdeal and the redesign project. For this purpose, we asked Christian Maass (CMO Printbrother Management) and Doede van Haperen (CTO Drukwerkdeal) a number of questions.

How does Drukwerkdeal apply data-driven work?

Christian: 
“I would call our approach more customer-driven than data-driven. Data are just a means of verifying customer insights. We make sure we capture as many insights as possible. And we make sure all employees are aware of our customers’ issues. For example, we integrate all feedback into Slack. This way, it is very easy to get a bottom-up view of the current challenges customers are facing. From a technical point of view, it is crucial to have a flexible ’tech stack” and a streamlined process, this way you can take advantage of all the potential that technology offers you."

Doede:
“The redesign project can be divided into three phases. First, internal development. Second, startup and testing. And finally, full availability and optimization. In the first phase, when we were building the new platform, we only had data from the old situation to guide our design and priorities. So we took as many insights as we could from the old platform. Things didn't always translate one-to-one, but provided a solid basis for deciding what steps to take before we had something valuable to begin with.”

How was communication between different departments?

Christian:
“We do not distinguish between online and offline, but create end-to-end teams that focus on specific customer journeys. An end-to-end team consists of employees from different domains, such as IT, marketing and everyone needed to ensure a good and deployable result. We have several end-to-end teams, with each team owning a particular customer domain. This ensures good communication flow.”

Doede:
“We set up the different steps based on objectives and product vision and brought them together so we could track the overarching progress of all the teams. So as long as you knew what the goals were and what timelines were expected, everyone could see where all the teams were and what exactly they were working on.”

What was the reason for choosing a redesign?

Christian:
“We don't believe you can successfully migrate to a new ’tech-stack.’ That's why we started developing a completely new ’tech-stack’. The reason is simple: we wanted to be more flexible and deliver faster. If we want to launch a new app, we are prepared. If we want to support voice search in your car, we are prepared. If we want to launch a new product from our subsidiaries in Europe, we can do it within minutes. We believe it's important to have an ‘API first tech stack’ that allows us to respond quickly to user requirements and needs, while keeping the source code readable. ”

Doede:
“The fewer skills you need to bring new ideas to market, the more flexible you become as a company. We wanted to give marketing and supply chain management control over all operational changes such as adding pages, products and categories. This new platform allows us to shift more capacity daily from operations, where developers were involved in every step of operations and changes took a lot of time, to development where developers can build new features and channels to scale and grow. Moreover, it offers all kinds of opportunities to differentiate on channels, mobility, global supply chain and more. ”

How did you proceed? What was the process?

Christian:
“As a first step, we created a working concept. We connected the key APIs and systems with the goal of being able to get orders in through the new ’tech stack.’ UX and design was not important at that stage. In the next step, we created a ‘minimum viable product’ for our main customer segment and the most relevant customer journeys. Of course, we paid close attention to our marketing channels before, during and after the migration to ensure an uninterrupted flow of traffic.”

Doede:
“We started the project with a single A4 sheet that stated the project strategy. What do we want to achieve? How do we want to achieve it? And how is it linked to the business strategy? We made sure the project's vision, strategy and timelines were known to everyone. All teams helped to repeat the one-sentence version of the project strategy and product vision of each phase. In this way, all team members could decide daily and incrementally how to deliver their best and most useful performance. ’

How was the collaboration with Online Dialogue?

Christian:
“The collaboration with Online Dialogue was super flexible. We needed support on short notice and the OD team rose to the challenge quickly and super flexibly. We integrated OD team members into our teams just like any other employee. There was a complementary combination of skills.”

Doede:
“Online Dialogue's daily report on the platform's performance was particularly helpful. Also because everyone understood that the reports were created with expert and data-driven insights.”

What were the pitfalls and challenges during the redesign project?

Christian:
‘Mainly meeting the intended deadline. The deadline and quality were always fixed, but we were flexible in terms of the content of the redesign. Leaving out some features naturally leads to interesting discussions with different stakeholders.”

Doede:
“Agreeing and actually applying are two different steps in the same process. It's hard to really understand the need to forget what you had and look only at the measurable facts to prioritize those features that add value in your new design. As with any tech project, all kinds of things fail, but usually only because of resistance to change within team members😉!”

Has there been any customer feedback on the new design?

Christian:
“The design changes we made are quite small compared to the backend. The focus has been on cleaning up the code and the ’tech stack.’ So far we have had good feedback.”

Doede:
“Direct feedback aside, I think the numbers speak for themselves. Our customer base has clearly embraced the new platform without giving it much thought.”

What would you advise other organizations considering a redesign?

Christian:
“Start with the customer, don't optimize for the needs of internal stakeholders.”

Doede:
“I totally agree with Christian, start with the customer in mind. I really don't think you should invest too much in development driven only by internal stakeholders. On the other hand, you should actually invest a lot in optimizing processes for internal stakeholders, as long as these processes add value for customers. Exactly this was a very important question that led to the redesign project. How can we optimize technology so that we can respond faster to the market? But yes, again, the market is what it's all about, and the customers who make up the market.”