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Our New Digital Home Has Arrived!

Comprehensive, informative, attention-grabbing: ORAFOL's new website creates the technological foundation for digital growth and features a completely refreshed design.

The Path to the New Website

"Our factory premises are our best salesperson." ORAFOL CEO Dr. Holger Loclair follows this principle when designing worldwide production locations. Our headquarters in Oranienburg, in which 767 million euros have been invested since its founding, sets the standard for quality and innovation. We've now transferred this standard to the digital world. Our new website creates a digital home—whether for new customers seeking information about our solutions, product users wanting to learn more about the properties and applications of our specialty films, or professionals interested in jobs at our headquarters. To ensure the new ORAFOL homepage fulfills its central role, we decided on a comprehensive relaunch in 2022. Three years of interdisciplinary work went into developing our digital presence to align with the needs of our customers and partners in Europe.

INTERDISCIPLINARY WORKSHOPS WITH THE DEPARTMENTS

Three years of interdisciplinary work

  • Interviews with customers
  • Onsite survey
  • Interdisciplinary workshops

ORAFOL has grown rapidly over the past decade and established itself internationally as one of the market leaders in the manufacture of self-adhesive specialty films. Against this backdrop, the ORAFOL website was already updated in 2018. In 2022, we built on this foundation and took another leap forward. The goal is to align our digital internet service with our customers' new needs. At the same time, our new digital home should make work easier for everyone on the team—especially sales. ORAFOL's broad product range has been structured in a Product Information System (PIM), the menu navigation completely redesigned, and new technical functions thoughtfully implemented.

A DETAILED ANALYSIS PROCESS – THE FOUNDATION OF THIS COMPLEX DIGITAL PROJECT

The Analysis – Understanding Users, Achieving Goals

At ORAFOL, relationships with our customers are the anchor point of all our work. Therefore, at the start of the project, it was clear: we would first ask them, as important users, what they value about our website and what we could improve. In 2023, as a kickoff, we conducted a comprehensive analysis of the existing website together with specialists from the agency "ressourcenmangel." This included a digital survey and personal, qualitative interviews with our customers. The strategic direction of the new website was ultimately developed by ORAFOL's Corporate Communications & Brand department in interdisciplinary workshops with various departments, in exchange with our customers, and with the support of our experienced agency partner. This detailed analysis process took time, but the results it revealed formed the foundation of this extensive digital project.

The Product Information System - A New Technical Core

In interviews with our customers and interdisciplinary workshops, we discovered that what makes ORAFOL special wasn't easy for everyone to find: our high-quality products. To improve this, we first had to create a new technical core for our website: a product database that catalogs our more than 500 standard products and where the wealth of data will be maintained in the future. Depending on the product, this database can store and display more than 150 individual product properties for our customers. The sheer volume of data illustrates how complex our products can be in their structure and how challenging the database design was.

"In a world determined by data, structure and order are crucial. ORAFOL's new product database creates the foundation for a connected, efficient, and future-proof digital environment," says Frederik Schulz from the agency ressourcenmangel.

"The website relaunch was a real joint effort: working together with the agency ressourcenmangel integral, we've created a digital platform that sets new standards for us. Close coordination, mutual trust and shared discipline were key to the success. The result reflects not only technological innovation, but also the strength of a successful collaboration," says Alexander Kurrat, who coordinated the website relaunch as project manager.

Navigation – Finding a Common Language

ORAFOL offers a wide range of sometimes highly specialized solutions. Our long-standing customers are very familiar with our product range. However, in our surveys, we found that new customers face challenges when, for example, trying to find products and solutions for specific applications. "With the new website, we've succeeded in providing users with an even more targeted entry into our product catalogue. Users from various industries can now find relevant products much faster through product categorization, application areas, or solution pages. The improved usability is supported by a new, powerful search engine," says Alexander Kurrat.

The Design – In Harmony with Our Design Guidelines

Parallel to work on the new ORAFOL website, the design guidelines for the corporate group were further developed in 2022. This new corporate design now has a strong presence on orafol.com—with large-format images and numerous structural modules for presenting texts, figures, and graphics. "We left nothing to chance," says Elke Beune, Head of Corporate Communication & Brand: "In close cooperation with ressourcenmangel, we managed to create something exceptionally beautiful. Our fundamental understanding of quality is reflected in the care taken in designing our website—from the font type to the smallest icon."

"The new website showcases our values of high technology, premium quality, and personality on the internet."
Elke Beune, Head of Corporate Communications & Brand
Why was it time to completely overhaul the ORAFOL website?

We have grown as a company, becoming larger and more international. And the world in which we sell our products has also changed. Our customers and partners want to understand more about what makes ORAFOL special than they did a few years ago. And of course, there have been a number of technological developments in the past decade that we need to accommodate going forward. Our "old" website was dear to everyone's hearts, but against this backdrop, it reached its limit.

How did you establish the new website?

As a team! That's a truism, but in this project, nothing would have worked without good collegiality. After all, we weren't just giving the old website a new coat of paint. This relaunch was a digital project led by corporate communications with strong confidence from management.

What advantages does the new website offer ORAFOL employees?

It was extremely motivating for everyone involved to recognize the concrete benefits of the new database from the beginning. In the future, we will achieve significant efficiency gains from several perspectives: in managing our product information, in the translation process, and in managing regional range differences. Beyond this, we are already developing additional functions that aren't yet included in the first launch version (MVP). In the next development phase, we plan additional automations—such as creating data sheets and customer-specific catalogues. We're also focusing on benefits for technical documentation in research and development.

Curious? Click directly to the new product database.

Read more in the ORAFOL magazine

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