“ Sitecore offers the core functionalities we needed for this project. We were most impressed by Sitecore’ s flexibility in handling multilingual translation, and the versatility of the .NET application platform. From an editor’s point of view, the intuitive and user-friendly user interface is not only extremely appealing but also very effective and time saving. „

- Ben Van Damme, Senior Account Manager, The Reference

Challenge

Betafence is the market leader in fencing and access control. It offers solutions for perimeter security of industrial and public property, sensitive sites as well as private gardens, agricultural domains and live stock. The Betafence headquarters is situated in Belgium. Betafence is a global company, with more than 2,130 employees, thirteen production facilities in eleven countries, and sells their products in more than 100 countries.

The mission for their website is to position the company as a “total solution provider” and to give the visitor a user-friendly experience while guiding him to the right solution for his needs. For the content contributors, the possibility to create and manage multilingual sites and to easily administer search engine metadata is key.

Previously, Betafence had a custom-built CMS, and some of the challenges they faced on their site included:

• Content such as texts, videos, images and documents were located in different databases.
• Localisation by country/language was complex and time consuming

Solution

Betafence selected Sitecore partner, The Reference, to help them strengthen their internet presence with a focus on:

1.     Offering an extensive and detailed overview of products and their applications
2.     Disclosing the customers extranet
3.     Creating a way to display distributors and installers based on where the site visitor was from

The Reference chose Sitecore as the Content Management Solution. According to Ben Van Damme, Senior Account Manager, The Reference, “Sitecore offers the core functionalities we needed for this project. We were most impressed by Sitecore’s flexibility in handling multilingual translation, and the versatility of the .NET application platform. From an editor’s point of view, the intuitive and user-friendly user interface is not only extremely appealing but also very effective and time saving.”

The extensibility of Sitecore allowed The Reference to easily integrate features such as the dealer locator, product finder, and RFP generator. The RFP generator uses Ajax to dynamically get the requested data without refreshing the browser. In addition, The Reference was able to make the Betafence site more search engine friendly with Sitecore, with meta-tags, website structure, alt-tags in the images code, XML-sitemap and search-engine-friendly URL generation.

Result

The new Betafence website was relaunched, and they are working to launch more than 20 additional local sites using Sitecore. Today, the main site offers multiple languages, including Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian. On the home page, site visitors can choose their country, and the site will display in the appropriate language. In addition, the customer experience is now personalized and interactive, with features such as:

•  Product finder: Customers are now able to search for products in a way that makes sense to them, by a drop down list, through product groups (i.e., gates and fences), or by an application area, such as industrial sites or public places.

•  Dealer locator: Customers can locate dealers and installers by postal code, city or country, and search results are displayed with Google Maps. Dealers within a 20 km radius are displayed, and if no results are found, the five closest dealers are shown.

•  Extranet: The Betafence extranet has been integrated into the local websites. Non-extranet users can request access to the extranet by using the contact form. In the extranet, additional content is disclosed, including partner support incentives and product support, such as additional product details.

•  References: Visitors of both the main site and the local websites can search for installation references of a specific product or application area. The site will display a list with the name, pictures, year of installation, city, country, and a brief project description

Technical Description

Solution Special Ingredients

Google Maps for interactive maps

Connection with the product database through web services

Ajax RFP generator

dtSearch and the dtSearch Sitecore module for global site search

Sitecore SEO module for search engine optimization