Damen Shipyards Group, together with its website partner Evident,has won the ‘Benelux Sitecore Experience Award 2014’ in the category ‘Business Transformation’. This prize is awarded to the best Sitecoresolution, meaning a solution which generates measurable, effective business results and avery good user experience. It was Damen’s online product catalogue www.products.damen.com that was favoured by the jury. This commercially successful website is gradually transforming Damen’s sales processes.
The online productcatalogue serves both existing and potential clients by being aimed at their inquiries and needs with a visually and powerful presentation of vessels and services. This happens at a detailed level – if the required vessel type is in Damen’s portfolio, you find what you seek. This makes it user-friendly and clients actively recognize this.
Indeed, the goal of the new product catalogue is lead generation, followed by concrete sales. Several vessels have already been delivered to new customers who handled their orientation, lead-qualification and first contact online. Damen’s platform is based on CMS Sitecore.
Showing more than just vessels
Björn Smets, Damen’s Online Marketing Manager says: “The new Online Product Catalogue shows more than just vessels. Almost our entire product portfolio is now online, from tugs to freighters and from ferries to fast crew suppliers. We don’t only show a list of technical details; the content and information is neatly wrapped-up and the ‘story’ is told in a powerful way with video’s, graphics en 3D-visualisations. Of course we still have some way to go to do allthis for every single vessel type, but we are getting there fast. We aim to provide the best online product experience for the customer.”
“We show different content to different audiences,” Björn Smets continues, “The thing they have in common, of course, is that they are searching the internet for a commercial ship to suit their immediate or future needs. The system is interactive,which results in Damen continuously being in online contact with existing and potential clients.”
The Sitecore Experience Award was presented to Damen and Evident at a dedicated event in Hal 4.1 in Rotterdam on December 10th, 2014.