Global TYPO3 Multisite Relaunch for Drees & Sommer

Drees & Sommer SE is a well-known, leading European consulting company who specializes in innovative and sustainable solutions for real estate, industry, and infrastructure. Headquartered in Germany, this international, partner-led company operates across 63 locations and is renowned for its leadership and pioneering in the sustainability and digitalization categories worldwide. Operating on a global scale, Drees & Sommer serves many markets in their online presence as they strive to deliver value to clients worldwide. In 2019, contenance GmbH was invited to pitch Drees & Sommer with an emphasis on front-end user experience improvement. contenance GmbH was selected due to their expertise in UX/UI design paired with their TYPO3 development and infrastructures. 

The pain points for their existing website included inefficient content management processes and a lacking centralized approach for editors across their global teams. When searching for a solution, they hoped to consolidate and standardize the internal processes in order to streamline the workload and time spent by editors accessing the content. Overall, the user experience across country websites was inconsistent and needed a uniform approach to reflect the brand identity and experience. The new installation would need to modernize their design, improve functionality and meet performance standards. 

The project would require an entire website relaunch—a first for Drees & Sommer. Their existing platform was unable to handle the requirements for a multi-language, multi-domain set up. TYPO3 was the perfect solution for this project as it can handle the complexities and allow for Drees & Sommer’s 23 root domains in a single TYPO3 installation. By implementing TYPO3, Drees & Sommer could unify content workflows and ensure a consistent, branded user experience across all markets. Overall, the user experience across country websites was inconsistent and needed a uniform approach to reflect the brand identity and experience. 

Beyond the multi-site and multi-lingual capabilities, it was essential that the project was led by a team who had a deep understanding of TYPO3 and could manage the complexity of their required system. Additionally, the new website would need to include advanced functionality features such as Apache Solr to enable smart searches, in combination with API integrations that could facilitate extended capabilities and content updates. By implementing a scalable solution such as TYPO3, they would be one step closer to establishing a future-proof digital platform that could handle any further global expansion and operational requirements. 

First, the contenance team migrated the existing platform to TYPO3 CMS v12 LTS. By migrating and upgrading the platform to the latest TYPO3 long-term support version, the platform was ensured to meet the “future-proof” and stable wishes of Drees & Sommer. Since the entire website was being redesigned and relaunched, it was an opportunity for contenance to redefine modern standards. The redesign included custom content elements which were specifically tailored to the new design identity. In the backend, the editor workflows were also redesigned and streamlined to alleviate editor workflows and enhance the content creation experience. 

With the foundation in place, contenance began to add more advanced features and integrations into the installation. Bespoke extensions were developed to improve operational efficiency and simplify workflows. The custom plugins and API integrations simplified project management as a whole. A custom extension that was designed for this project was the “Smart Recruiters” integration. This extension integrated Smart Recruiters directly into the installation which accomplished two things—first, it allowed for effortless job postings and second, improved HR workflows immensely. 

The core theme of this redesign revolved around the need for performance optimization. This included improving and ensuring fast loading times to enhance the overall performance and user experience. This was accomplished by maintaining a clean and efficient codebase while simultaneously optimizing assets. Javascript dependencies were also minimized to aid in the performance optimization goal. 

Due to their collaborative approach, the Drees & Sommer website was successfully relaunched with a user-centered, high-performance TYPO3 solution. The contenance team’s expertise in UX/UI, TYPO3 development and SEO led to an ongoing partnership focused on continuous innovation. The relaunched platform delivers a consistent experience for both users and editors, further positioning Drees & Sommer as a digital leader in their industry.

The relaunched website operates on TYPO3 v12 and reports a 90% performance and technology score from tools such as GtMetrix and PageSpeedInsights. The partnership between Drees & Sommer and contenance is ongoing. The website is now designed to run efficiently both in the frontend and backend and boasts a modern interface with room for future additions. 

Finding the right CMS for your needs is only one part of the puzzle. Finding the right agency and team to turn your organization’s vision into reality is the key to delivering measurable impact with long-term success. contenance is an agency dedicated to providing user-centered and high-performance digital solutions, driving companies toward sustainable growth and success.

TYPO3 supports projects of all sizes and use cases. Are you interested in taking your web presence to the next level? 

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