Hitachi global website.

Client

Hitachi - Johnson Controls Air Conditioning

Location

Worldwide

Work

Project strategy, UX research, web design (IA, IxD, UX/UI design, prototyping, animation), coding, content strategy, design production, digital TOV, copywriting.

Team

Creative director, UX/UI designer, interaction designer, project director, project manager, coders, copywriter.

We’ve been working closely with Hitachi - Johnson Controls Air Conditioning team on a major rebrand and on their new digital approach. As part of that, they asked us to design and roll out their new global website.

When we say website, we really mean websites. Lots of them. Because what we delivered was a complete toolkit for countries to adapt, publish and manage their own unique but on-brand Hitachi Cooling & Heating site.

01.The website.

Because we’d already worked on UX upgrades for the previous website, we had a headstart understanding requirements for the new one. Key to this was refocusing on people not products, to help different user groups easily find the information they need.

Introducing Hitachi Cooling & Heating.

The global website would effectively launch the new Hitachi Cooling & Heating brand. The design had to be an instantly recognisable expression of the new identity, and yet be easily adaptable for local markets.

Multiple targets.

Visitors to Hitachi Cooling & Heating sites include installers, distributors, architects and project managers, as well as regular people! We created an information architecture that works for everyone.

Modular design.

Global doesn’t mean one size fits all. It was essential to develop a design system that worked for diverse markets. A modular system allows each country to customise their site to meet their customers’ needs.

CMS driven, CRM optimised.

The custom CMS allows countries to configure and manage their own sites and gives them access to powerful CRM tools. Lead tracking integrated with Salesforce gives marketing managers the data to create optimised campaigns.

02.The global rollout.

This wasn’t a simple site launch. Each country was given the tools to adapt the master website to their market. The whole roll out process would take place across more than 20 countries over six months. Guiding and supporting people through the process was key to the project’s success.

Three. Two. One. Lift off.

The roll out was planned in three phases and we launched a microsite to support each one. The first site introduced the global website project, the second presented guidelines and resources for planning the site, and the third provided everything needed for implementation.

Resources.

If you want Japan, Spain and India to independently create websites that share a coherent brand identity, you need clear guidelines – for everything.

Style guide.

We created a dedicated online style guide for developers, designers, copywriters and anyone working on a Hitachi Cooling & Heating website. In covers everything from colors and typography, through how to build pages, to the tone of voice.

CMS and code guides.

For the CMS we wrote a detailed but down-to-earth guide to make the system accessible for everyone, whatever their technical ability.

On the other hand, if a country needs to customise or augment any functionality, we also provided complete technical documentation for their developers.

Support & maintenance.

We provided round the clock technical support for countries during the roll out. Post launch, continual monitoring of five key sites helps identify any issues and schedule updates.

Using analytics, heatmaps and session recording we collect and analyse user behaviour and site performance data. Because the sites all run on a common engine, we can push out global updates and maintain an ongoing programme of improvements.

Monitoring and user testing.

Post launch, continual monitoring of five key sites helps identify any other issues. Using analytics, heatmaps and session recording we collect and analyse user behaviour and site performance data. Because the sites all run on a common engine, we can push out global updates and maintain an ongoing programme of improvements.