Fresh new website addresses today’s unique business challenges

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Written by
Joerg Hufschmid

Senior Manager Digital Marketing – Panasonic Connect Europe

Panasonic Connect Europe’s fresh new solutions-focused website reflects the company’s mantra to help its customers Change Work, Advance Society and Connect to Tomorrow. Joerg Hufschmid, the driving force behind the latest evolution, explains why the new website is ideal for business-to-business organisations looking for technology solutions to today’s challenges.

Today sees the official launch of Panasonic Connect Europe’s new website (https://connect.panasonic.eu), which is at the heart of our digital marketing strategy.

A year in the making

Just over a year ago, Panasonic Connect Europe was launched to help B2B organisations address the unique business challenges they face. We wanted a website that reflected this new organisation and that could be a valuable resource to our customers by showing how they can use the latest technologies to innovate.

We address a wide range of business sectors from Manufacturing, Logistics and Retail to Media and Entertainment, Education and the Public Sector. As a result, we also offer an incredibly wide range of products and solutions varying from rugged computing, broadcast and ProAV, projectors, professional displays and collaboration solutions to supply chain, smart factory, robot and welding and microelectronics.

As a consequence, you can imagine the quantity of information that our historic 10-year-old website was carrying. It was like a cruise ship – large, heavy and tricky for visitors to navigate. As it had developed over time, new business areas had been added and information was often siloed and hard for us to manage.

We required a modern web presence that would be at the heart of our digital marketing strategy. A website that was focused on the challenges faced by our customers and that could engage and guide them through the latest technology solutions to address their needs.

A customer-led design

We carried out a number of surveys upfront to ask our customers what they needed and we based the design around their answers. Respondents told us that being able to quickly access different sources of information was the most important thing. For example, being able to find customer stories, or news and blogs in one place and being able to filter them quickly for relevance. 

We also wanted visitors to be able to choose the way they used the website. So, we added a product and industry filter selector. If visitors are very familiar with our solutions, they can look at information using the product filter and jump straight to the technologies they are interested in. However, if they are looking for answers to their business challenges and want to learn, they can click a button and we present them with business-driven information via an industry filter. In addition, there is a state-of-the-art product selector to find the best solution at the click of a button.

To make it easy to navigate, the website uses the latest Content Management System to deliver the most complete and current range of thought leadership, product, marketing and reference information. It is SEO optimised to make information fast and easy to find at the click of a button.

Dealer and reseller information can be found at the click of a button with Google map support. If visitors want research, whitepapers or customer case studies – they can filter by their requirements and find them at a glance with the resource finder. All downloadable content - from photos to manuals and CAD files – has been brought into one location for easy access. To keep up-to-date with the latest industry and Panasonic thought leadership there is an easy-to-navigate News and Events section.

Combining internal and external expertise

We had a great design and development partner working with us – Torpedo Group. As a result, the practical design and development went incredibly smoothly and to budget. Some of the biggest challenges were practical elements like choosing the final design for the website – that can always be subjective. Also editing down the content and managing the translations. Then lastly the final migration to the new website, where we had a large team of people checking every aspect of the site to see that it was working as planned. This process is time consuming and painstaking but also exciting because you see the site come to life in front of your eyes.

Just the beginning

And with the introduction of the new website now, the exciting thing is that it is just the beginning. The improvements will keep coming. For example, we have more personalisation to come where regular visitors will be presented with content that reflects their specific search and interest areas.

Jan Kaempfer, our Marketing Director, described it best when he said: “The new website is at the heart of our digital strategy. Our marketing and social media activities work hand-in-hand and draw people to our website. But this is the resource where our customers initially come to learn about new innovations to address their business challenges and then return time and time again to keep up with the latest developments, see our customers’ latest successes and take part in our community-driven events.”

For me, it’s now a digital reflection of Panasonic Connect Europe. A business with a purpose to help its customers use technology and services to improve the way they work and society as a whole.

https://connect.panasonic.eu