Client profile
DaimlerChrysler is one of the largest producers of automobiles in the world. For their brand Mercedes-Benz, the Middle-East is the second largest market for passenger and commercial vehicles. According to recent studies every third passenger vehicle purchased is initiated with an internet search and subsequent browsing of desired sites. The average car buyer spends approximately 60 minutes browsing 3-4 brand sites before contacting a dealer or visiting a showroom.
Brief
The Middle-East, regional office for the car manufacturer DaimlerChrysler needed new web sites to represent and market their key brands Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge and Mercedes-Benz. There were several reasons for making changes. The cost of ownership of the old sites was very high and escalating. A lot of internal manpower had to be dedicated to maintenance and content creation. In addition a constant need for external expertise was steadily growing. The Corporate Identity of the respective brands was not secured throughout all web presences in the Middle-East.
N ew Design Style Guides were to be implemented. An enormous amount of images and tabular data (technical specs. Of cars, standard and optional equipment etc.) was maintained manually with the result that error did occur. Our challenge was to raise accuracy and reduce maintenance cost. All sites had to be bi-lingual in English with Arabic “mirror-sites”. In addition to the challenge of mirrored sites we had to handle two completely different character sets and the fact that Arabic is written from right-to-left, which means also changing alignment for input and maintenance as well as presentation of content.
The DaimlerChrysler Middle-East office is located in Dubai. The Digimaker head office is located in Norway. The team had to work long distance for most of the project. This set high standards for documentation and communications protocol.
Solution
The first site to be completed was
www.mideast.mercedes-benz.com. In the subsequent month after going live there was a substantial surge in number of visits which later settled into a steady growth.
Corporate Identity, Brand and product management is handled in a much more structured and cost-effective manner. All data regarding the technical specifications, standard and optional equipment for particular models are entered into a central repository managed by Mercedes-Benz head office. Instead of manually replicating these data, they are managed in one place. Updated data are imported into the Digimaker e-Form Database. Whenever a user accesses the technical data for a particular model, a SELECT statement is run by the template on the Technical Data table, returning the latest update of technical data for that particular model. The Digimaker e-Form Database can be updated manually by inputting directly into the Digimaker Administrator Interface, Semi-Manually by uploading an Excel sheet which has been stored as a CSV file, or automatically through several methods of integration between Digimaker and the data source of your choice.
Result
"Even after half a year we at DaimlerChrysler Middle East are still amazed at how quick and easy daily updating of our complex website is now. Many departments have their own dedicated and restricted access (e.g. Press department for News & Events pages) and thus the process of updating is very streamlined. Finally, we’d like to point out especially the speed of implementation (less than 2 months) and the solving of individual challenges by Digimaker as a huge advantage."
Arndt Schmidtmayer,
eBusiness and CRM responsible DaimlerChrysler Middle East