Website "made by stocubo"? Exactly! We decided to make ourselves as independent as possible from external service providers and to design and program our online presence on our own. What are the masterminds behind the new website particularly proud of? Our tech team and our designer will tell you here.
Our team of three programmers consisting of Philipp, Théo and Till
And where do you start with such a huge project?
To continue the analogy with the modularity of our products, we looked at what open source tools are out there and how to use them to write software that meets our needs. We then set about coding ourselves. Now we can give back some of our experience and knowledge to the developer community.
What made you as a company say we do everything ourselves?
We wanted to build a website that is as modular and sustainable as our product. As a company, we have the claim to produce locally and fairly - in a way, we wanted to transfer that to our software as well. We built the website for the product and not the other way around. In addition, there were no ready-made solutions on the market to combine our operational processes - from production to the configurator to the back office - in one system. But these were all components that we wanted to connect and integrate.
What improvements are coming with the new website?
It is more sustainable in the sense that we have throttled energy consumption. The website's performance is optimized so that our server requires significantly less power to run all processes. Simply put, our website doesn't drain the battery as quickly. In addition, we have "coded" a very big privilege for ourselves: We are as independent as possible from external international service providers and companies. This automatically results in a higher level of security. The data is not routed through dozens of servers and third-party providers, but is literally in our basement.
What new feature are you most proud of?
Till & Philipp: Definitely, the content management system: All colleagues can contribute to the website in a modular way. At the same time, the website is so flexible that we can react to change requests quickly and easily. This may not show so outwardly, but it is a great internal and also inner value for the company.
Théo: It's great to see that our performance is now displayed properly. All kinds of tools rate our website very well. This is the best feedback we can get. The decision we made two years ago to develop the website ourselves has paid off.
Did you have a specific intention for the new website design?
In essence, we had three concerns: We wanted to better communicate the modularity of our products, offer our customers more inspiration through shelves designed by us or the community, and make the subpages more appealing and clearer overall. I think we've succeeded in doing that and I'm already very excited about the feedback from our customers.
How did you develop the new design together with the other stocubos?
The process of this project was more inclusive than what I knew before. For the website design, I worked closely with the IT department, Julia, our CEO, and the marketing team. As a small team, our feedback loops were very short and we were able to make adjustments relatively quickly. Of course, very different feedback comes from such different areas, and it's a matter of keeping an open mind, compromising, insisting on ideas that I think are important, and taking a deep breath every now and then. :)
What design element are you most proud of?
I am very happy that we can now present our inspiring photos and videos in large formats and thus create a "shop window effect". For me, however, the launch is just the first step and I have many more ideas that I would like to implement in the future. So, keep an eye on our website!