Damen Shipyards receives new platform for websites
Damen.com moves its website to a renewed Sitecore platform. Thanks to the modular architecture of this new platform, the sites are more easily controllable and parts of it can be reused more easily. Damen.com will be able to launch microsites for specific goals more quickly, upscale the capacity more quickly in case of rush and the sites all have the same look and feel.
Sales and maintenance of ships all over the world
The companies that belong to Damen Shipyards Group sell ships all over the world. Partly directly available from stock. They also offer repair services and sell parts, for the most diverse markets. Several examples include offshore, ports, dredging, passenger transport, defense, fishing and cruises. Damen Shipyards Group has companies spread across 34 countries; it employs over 6,000 people.
Two portals for Damen Services
"Damen Services and Damen Marketing are two parts of the company," Ronald Nieuwenhuis, Team Lead at Iquality, explains. "They each have their own platform with websites and portals. For Damen Services, we developed and maintain two portals: one for customers and one for Field Service Engineers. Customers who log onto damenservices.com will immediately have access to information about their ships, warranty claims, documents and such. The portal for Field Service Engineers partly offers the same information, but instead ordered in a way convenient to Field Service Engineers."
New platform for Damen Marketing
Damen.com is the platform the marketing department uses. It is a Sitecore environment with sites for various docks and daughter enterprises. The current platform is antiquated. Therefore, it was decided to change to a new platform, according to the latest ideas about implementation on the Sitecore platform. This is done site by site. The look of the sites has been adapted to suit each other. This had become quite diverse throughout the years.
Reuse of parts
"The key thought behind the new architecture is that you construct the websites in a modular way," Ronald explains. "In doing so, you separate content, technology and design. The first advantage is that you can more easily adjust a site later, because there is less dependence between the various components. The second advantage is that this also allows you to reuse parts of one site for another site. Think of a news module, search module or FAQ module. In the past, this was all one big batch of code for a site, now the modules are more individual."
Large box of components
The first website that transferred to the new platform was damenshiprepair.com. The next site on the platform will be a new e-commerce site. Subsequently, more sites will be transferred and new sites will be developed. Ronald: "The components we've made for Shiprepair are now used for the e-commerce site as much as possible. Moreover, we add components to this that are specific to e-commerce. This creates an increasingly larger box of components that allow one to launch a new site more easily and more quickly.”
The style guide grows alongside it
The current sites of the various docks and daughter enterprises have been made by different design agencies and therefore do not look enough alike. With the transfer to the new platform, Iquality creates more consistency between the sites. Ronald: "All buttons, headers, lists and such we make are also described in a style guide. This serves as the basis for the next sites. Components that are new to the next sites are subsequently added to the style guide as well. Making the style guide increasingly complete."
