OUR CLIENT
Die Ballondrucker
Die Ballondrucker have been active for more than 40 years now. They offer a wide range of balloons in their online store, which we have been supporting as a technical partner since 2013. A central function of the online store is the customisation of balloons: customers can upload their own designs and create unique balloons.
Wonder how we can help your online business?
With the big picture in mind
Die Ballondrucker are part of the Westeifel Werke company group. At 13 locations, the non-profit organization Westeifel Werke GmbH of the Lebenshilfen Bitburg, Daun and Prüm helps people with disabilities to live and work in a self-determined way. We are proud to be able to count Die Ballondrucker among our customers.
Whether their customers need ballons for advertising, carnival celebrations, weddings or birthday parties, Die Ballondrucker professionally assists their customers. The customers’ wishes are implemented in the factory with great print quality. Die Ballondrucker are not only concerned about social responsibility for people, but also about the environment. For this reason, the company attaches great importance to using biodegradable and sustainable materials while maintaining high quality in their production.
Their online store is available in three languages managed in one Magento instance, which allows them to address different customers in German, French and English-speaking countries.
There are no limits to individuality
Just as unique as Die Ballondrucker are themselves is the balloon print designer, which allows website visitors to design their balloons online according to their own requirements and to order them. Customers decide on the look, size and colour of the balloons and can then give free rein to their creativity. It is possible to use your own designs or to combine ready-made graphics with your own text in the balloon print designer. A special challenge for us was to implement these functions in a way that they can also be comfortably used on mobile devices.
The customer-oriented approach is not only reflected in the balloon print designer, but also in other aspects of the Magento shop. Die Ballondrucker offer their customers extensive contact options, including a chat function, so that they can deal with questions effectively and provide optimal customer service.
Communication at eye level
While we deal with IT topics every day, for Die Ballondrucker this is only a small part of their work. We are therefore keen to avoid buzzwords where possible and instead communicate the technical context in an understandable way. Only in this way both parties can act efficiently and realise their goals.
With long-standing customers such as Die Ballondrucker, we particularly enjoy to not only provide initial advice, but also to continuously suggest ideas to help our customers move their ecommerce business forward, and to be able to see the results of our development for the company and the online store. Our most recently completed project is the migration to Magento 2 with a Hyvä frontend for performance optimisation of the entire shop where we already see improved results.
The new Magento 2 frontend with Hyvä Themes
Der Ballondrucker online store is one of our first projects launched with Hyvä Themes. Based on Hyvä Themes, we have created a fast and flexible frontend that focuses on a positive user experience of customers. With a tech stack of TailwindCSS and AlpineJS, Hyvä Themes offers an alternative to JavaScript-based solutions. In addition, it works without the ballast of enormous amounts of code usually encountered in Magento frontend solutions. As a result, the complexity of developing a Magento frontend is significantly reduced and it is easy to achieve very good loading times in the online store. The very good values in Google’s Lighthouse Score of the new Die Ballondrucker store, including a performance rating of 94 out of 100 possible points, underline this. Further optimisations of the Magento shop are planned.
A great site performance not only ensures a good UX, but it also has a positive effect on Google rankings and thus on the visibility of the online store in relevant search queries for balloons.
As can be seen in the project with Ballondrucker, Hyvä can be optimally adapted to individual requirements. Thanks to the simple technical basis, we can also implement new feature requests in the frontend more easily in the future than it is the case with other Magento 2 frontend solutions.
Lighthouse Score measured in February 2021
Our Projects with Ballondrucker
2021
- Launch of the store with Magento 2: The Magento 2 store is launched with a frontend based on Hyvä Themes.
2020
- Start of the migration to Magento 2: Together we take the step from Magento 1 to Magento 2.
- Redesign of the online store: Start of the redesign of the store with the new Magento frontend Hyvä Themes.
2019
- Continuous optimisation: Instead of large projects, this year we implement smaller optimisations for user-friendliness and process flows in many places in the online store.
2018
- Balloon configurator for mobile: In order to be able to use the configurator from anywhere, we have adapted it for mobile devices. This makes ordering individual designs easier – even when you’re on the move.
2016
- Relaunch of the balloon configurator: The success of the configurator required a contemporary adaptation, which we carried out in the course of a relaunch.
2015
- ERP interface: To optimise internal processes, we advised Die Ballondrucker on the creation of a connection between Magento and the Kologio ERP system from Micos.
2014
- Launch of the balloon configurator: The configurator, specially designed for Die Ballondrucker, enables customers to turn their balloon ideas into reality.
2013
- Start of the cooperation: In 2013, we took over the technical support of the already existing Magento store.
Outlook
ERP interface
In order to make article maintenance more efficient, an interface between the ERP system Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Magento is planned. The catalogue will also be revised at the same time.
UX optimisation
A revision is planned for the balloon designer, in which the design and UX aspects will be improved.
Klarna as a payment option
An integration is planned that will enable customers to pay in the online store using the various payment methods offered by Klarna.
What goals do you want to achieve with your business?
We will discuss with you the opportunities e-commerce holds for you
and how we can help you to benefit from them.
Christian Philipp
Management & Project Management