Improved user experience for happy sales partners

How Hörmann is providing increased digital support to dealers and architects.

Since its founding, Hörmann KG has sold more than 20 million doors and is known in the industry for its quality and versatility. The challenge for dealers and architects is to select from the multitude of products those that meet the specific requirements of their projects. To make this task easier, Hörmann has developed a digital product catalog with communicode, which makes it possible to find and filter the products they are looking for based on their characteristics.

Furthermore, Hörmann has undertaken a large-scale digitalization project in order to place their entire product range on a smarter and broader digital foundation, thus improving the user experience. Here, communicode was particularly convincing with its consulting and solution approach. The long-term goal is to optimize Hörmann's entire B2B customer journey in order to offer an improved user experience and to facilitate the selection process for dealers and architects.

The initial situation: Complex product access at Hörmann.

Before the digital project, Hörmann's products for dealers and architects were spread across various access channels, including printed catalogs, telephone contacts, price lists and architect programs. This fragmentation made searching for and configuring the products considerably more difficult.

The communicode way: a holistic approach to user-centered design

Understanding: In order to grasp the user context, the target groups and the status quo of the Customer Journey, our UX experts conducted workshops, interviews and user tests. The user tests with retailers and architects gave us a very detailed insight into the flow and processes of their daily work and highlighted potential hurdles. Important usability weaknesses were uncovered, and user goals and needs were defined.

Conceptualizing: Based on the user insights we developed ideas, defined clear goals and created a comprehensive UX concept.

Design: Our UX team developed creative solutions for the user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) and visualized both the UX and UI components to represent the intended user experience. To do this, we used Hörmann's style guide, which we extended to include store components.

Implementation: communicode created a web component library for Hörmann. By using simple, independent modules, no additional control of the implementation is required. The result is a constant user interface for various web-based applications.

Testing: Through several internal tests, we ensured that the product meets user requirements, provides an optimal user experience, and that both the UX and UI design are effectively implemented.

Result: Innovative customer benefit and improved user experience.

Hörmann has successfully mastered this challenge with communicode by integrating various access paths into a user-friendly digital product catalog. This catalog enables architects, dealers and end customers to easily find products with the help of a faceted search and filter function. This has taken the user experience to a new level and offers real added value.

The intelligent product catalog allows users to search products and information on multiple data levels. All relevant information, including instructions, certificates and accessory references, is easily accessible on the product pages. In addition, seamless integration with upstream and downstream processes for dealers ensures a smooth flow from selection process to purchase. These improvements have significantly strengthened customer acquisition and retention for Hörmann.

A look into the digital future

In order to further advance the digitalization of Hörmann KG and to offer customers as well as partners a unique user experience in the digital Hörmann cosmos, Hörmann and communicode are currently working on the establishment of a user-friendly and holistic Hörmann Business Platform. Further important B2B functionalities such as order processing, complaint management and other self-services will be centrally played out via the platform.