“ What we love about Sitecore is that we’ve been able to combine creativity, sophistication, and efficiency. We’re managing a lot of different countries and languages with ease, and we’re creating a community among our site visitors. We are a premium brand and an international company, and we are now able to brand our products in a consistent way worldwide. With Sitecore, it makes our site look like there are a lot more people working on it than there actually is! „

- Kjetil Aarseth, Communications Manager, Stokke

Challenge

Stokke AS is a Norwegian company with headquarters located in Ålesund, in the northwestern part of Norway. Their philosphy, “In the best interests of the child,” is the cornerstone of their product innovation, development and production. Each Stokke product is developed to stimulate a child's ongoing development. Stokke provides worldwide distribution through selected retailers represented in about fifty countries.

Previously, Stokke’s web site was hard-coded, and a computer programmer was needed to make all edits and updates to the site.  This was expensive and time-consuming, especially considering all of the different languages that needed to be translated. In addition, since only a few people could make changes to the site, Stokke was held to the programmers’ schedules and availability. Since the solution was custom-built, if any of the programmers who knew how to use it left the company, then it would be difficult to obtain support for the site.

Stokke decided to look for a solution that would help them easily make changes to the site and also fulfill the following goals:

• Compelling design: An easy-to-navigate, attractive, and interactive site that would be interesting and useful for site visitors. Stokke wanted to create a “wow” factor with their design and content.
• Stickiness: Previously, target groups weren’t finding the site interesting, and were not spending much time on the site. Stokke wanted to take a personal approach, and provide content that parents, grandparents, and child care providers would be interested in – not just information about Stokke’s products, but advice and tips about parenting and children.
• Retail support: A site that would allow Stokke’s global retailers to achieve their goals.
• SEO: Web pages that would be found and directed by the search engines. Their previous site didn’t have enough text richness, and search engines such as Google weren’t finding the site.
• Intuitive interface: Ability to manage content without reliance on technical experts, including uploading pictures, .PDFs, and flash files – which was difficult to do in the old site.
• Multilingual: A site that would allow Stokke to handle the many languages they wanted to display.

Stokke also wanted a commercial solution – they didn’t want to be dependent on a few individuals for support and updates to the CMS.

Solution

Stokke worked with web developer Portalia to find a solution. They decided they wanted a publishing system based on .NET. Stokke evaluated several commercial CMS solutions, and chose Sitecore because it is .NET, and offers the features and flexibility that would allow them to meet all of their goals. Portalia had no experience with Sitecore previously, but they were able to quickly achieve the technical level that they needed to build the technical framework within the CMS.

According to Kjetil Aarseth, Communication Manager, Stokke, “We wanted to make the CMS as invisible as possible. As a communicator, I want the technical system to be like a referee in sports – if you don’t notice the referee, that’s a good thing.”

They started from scratch building a new site based on the Sitecore framework. Almost all content was premade in their prior custom solution, until they pushed a button, and the old site was out and the new site was in. Says Aarseth, “I saw instantly that Sitecore was exactly what we needed. This was what our end customers and the search engines needed. Our ratings improved quickly.”

Result

The new Stokke site has been extremely successful:

• Increased site traffic:  Their site traffic has increased – with five times the number of site visitors as before. 
• Dramatically improved SEO: The SEO was dramatically improved for all 28 languages. In fact, today more than 30% of their traffic now comes from search engines -- it was lower than 1% previously.  Stokke is using Sitecore's built-in compliance capabilities to easily alert content editors to add Alt-Tags and meta-data right in context.  Reminders are enforced for these and other best practices that ensure their content is set up for maximum SEO.
• Link to retailers: The site is linked to Google maps, so customers can find retailers worldwide, and they can buy from retailers online.
• Compelling design: The site now beautifully showcases Stokke’s products, and offers advice, tips and tricks that are keeping visitors on the site longer. There’s even a way for visitors to give parenting advice about particular topics. As far as design and content, Aarseth says, “The Stokke site is among the best now, when it comes to benchmarks.  Plus, with Sitecore, I’ve thought a lot less about technical framework than with any other solution.”
• Newsletter outreach:  Stokke obtains customer information when they register on the site or purchase a product, and Stokke is using Sitecore’s newsletter module to communicate with their customers.

Says Aarseth, “What we love about Sitecore is that we’ve been able to combine creativity, sophistication, and efficiency.  We’re managing a lot of different countries and languages with ease, and we’re creating a community among our site visitors.  We are a premium brand and an international company, and we are now able to brand our products in a consistent way worldwide.  With Sitecore, our site looks like there are a lot more people working on it than there actually is!”

Multilingual

The multilingual aspect of the Stokke site is a big part of this story.  Previously, the process for getting content translated was time consuming and costly.  If new content was added to the site in English, then someone at Stokke had to copy and paste that content into a Microsoft Word file, send it to a translation house that would translate the content, then send it back to Stokke in another Word document.  Then the translated content had to be copied and pasted back into the web site, in the appropriate place. This becomes very tedious, time consuming, and expensive – especially when there are multiple languages involved.  For example, if it takes one afternoon to copy and paste translated content back onto the site, consider if you have 28 languages like Stokke.  Now you’re up to 28 afternoons.

Stokke is now going through Sitecore partner, Clay Tablet, for all of their translation. Now, when someone at Stokke enters text on the site in English that needs to be translated, they hit submit and push the “translate” button, and the content automatically goes through Clay Tablet to the appropriate, predetermined translation house anywhere in the world, is translated in as many languages as needed, and sent back through Clay Tablet, and back onto the site. 

Says Aarseth, “Using Sitecore and Clay Tablet is almost like magic. I write something in English, push a button, and within a few days all text is translated and on the right page and in the correct language for that page.”

Today the Stokke site is available in 28 languages.  “We’re saving a lot of time and risk – now, the headlines, text, links, and everything else is in the correct spot.  We are saving lots of energy from people making mistakes. It saves me time, and it saves the content editors time. In addition, because everything is automated through Sitecore and Clay Tablet, I have a lot of leverage when discussing pricing with translation houses.  There is a lot less work on their end, and we’re saving money. It’s a great benefit for everyone.”

All pages on the Stokke site are available in all languages. Because of different safety standards around the world, there are a few differences when it comes to products and how they look in different languages.  Otherwise, the look and feel is the same in all 28 languages. 

Technical Description

Solution Special Ingredients:

• Clay Tablet for translation services
• Google maps
• Sitecore newsletter module