Hilti
Experience the brand at every touchpoint
Customer experience for a leading direct-to-consumer brand.
Hilti stands for quality, innovation and the best service for professionals on construction sites all over the world. The demands from the digital customer experience are correspondingly high.
A consistent focus on the needs of the target group, along with efficiency and scalability, are central requirements for the digital services from the Lichtenstein-based company. These requirements therefore also apply to us. Following two fundamental revisions of the eCommerce platform in 2012 and 2016, the cooperation has now changed. The separation between agency and client has been largely eliminated and we work as an integral part of Hilti's digital unit of almost 200 people on the ongoing development of brand, services and platform.
Continuous improvement process
Continuity is the key to our mutual success. Mutual trust and well-coordinated teams make it possible to manage the complexity of an end-to-end customer experience across multiple touchpoints. A lot has happened since our last website relaunch in 2016. Initially, we developed a comprehensive design system. The platform was revised in all its facets based on that and configurators and digital products were redesigned and implemented. A consistent experience was created across all platforms, apps and tools thanks to the design system.
eCommerce: simple and scalable
Hilti sets itself apart with their very large variety of products. They also have lots of modules and services that can be combined. This requires a platform that brings together a multitude of qualities: powerful, efficient, scalable and simple to use. The challenge is to access the enormous complexity as simply as possible while still doing justice to the brand. For this, we have developed configurators such as 'Make it fit'. It facilitates simple product selection by asking questions that relate to use. All solutions were developed and tested together with construction professionals. This puzzle of complexity revealed simplicity, which serves the brand and customer experience.
Research paves the road towards the ideal UX
We have also been supporting Hilti with UX research since 2020. Closely interlinked with the internal team and yet with a view from the outside, we use qualitative interviews to identify problems and needs at all touchpoints. The knowledge gained serves as a basis for decision-making: Which features are useful and offer the greatest added value? Which investments are worthwhile and which are not? We generate valuable information from interviews and tests, which flows directly into the work the integrated teams are carrying out.
Big brand on the small and big screen
Needless to say, the digital experience has to work on all devices. Consequently, our design system takes full account of the different characteristics of various devices. When downscaling from desktop to mobile, content and function are automatically adapted, while responsive design maintains the characteristic layout on all screen sizes and digital touchpoints. A new framework was also developed for the Hilti app, including UI specifications and UX patterns, so that technical solutions and requirements could be aligned in the best possible way.
Consistent and flexible design system
We attach great importance to the balance between usability and identity. To this end, we designed a library of 'design tokens' and components. A new colour world and variable typography provide more flexibility in the design; equality of elements, equal standing instead of outdoing; generous division of space; full responsiveness; scalability. A system was created overall that combines flexibility with consistency.
Scalable and user-friendly systems
State-of-the-art tools for creating templates and functions, and a system of modular components, bring the design system to life. Technologies like Angular, Nrwl NX and GraphQL mean that Hilti is flexibly positioned for the future. We are working together towards an API-driven micro-service architecture and a decoupled front-end framework so as to be able to react flexibly and quickly to the new needs of target groups and markets in the future. In other words, a long-standing and continuous process of improvement for one of the most exciting direct-to-customer brands in the world.
