hep Verlag Webshop

The new, user-friendly website should present the wide range of products in a modern and attractive way. Several ideas are in the foreground: The online shop should display the variety of products in a simple and accessible way. In addition, it should function as a central information platform for the various products and their formats. For hep Verlag, it should also serve as a central marketing tool.

• Present a diverse product catalogue with over 4000 products

• Provide detailed information on products and offers

• Easy handling and flexibility of the website for hep employees

• Modular elements for flexible display of content

• Present current topics & promotions in different forms

• Good accessibility despite high complexity

The biggest challenge is the product catalogue with over 4000 products. These are managed and mapped in PONDUS, the ERP of hep Verlag. To avoid having to maintain the content twice, we integrated the ERP into the new online shop via an interface. This way, products and their attributes can be displayed flexibly on the website. Additional complexity is created through various different product types (book, e-textbook, PDF, ebook), links to partners (beook and myskillbox) and numerous features such as the use of coupons & vouchers, component-based landing pages and product pages.

In several workshops the concept was defined (with the help of wireframes), as well as the new page structure and the requirements for the website. Based on the corporate design of hep Verlag, an attractive and user-friendly user interface design was created.

During several months, the new extensive website was implemented with the CMS Statamic. The web shop connection was realised with the Laravel framework.

With almost 30 unique components (website building blocks) and 9 header styles, the hep Verlag team can build various landing pages independently. The flexibility of the CMS offers an individual design of different offers, information and products. The modular structure of the CMS allows for intuitive collection of a wide variety of content. The components are responsive. This means that the content looks ideal on different screen sizes (smartphone, tablet, desktop, etc.) without the hep team having to adapt anything. In this way, their individual target groups can find high-quality teaching materials with a wide range of useful information in one place.

The technically complex interface to Pondus represents a significant added value for hep Verlag. The data of the products are imported directly from the ERP into the webshop and automatically compiled into a beautiful product page. The product can then be enriched in Statamic (CMS) by hep with data or components that are not available in the ERP. In this way, product pages are created automatically without much effort.

mySkillbox is a service offered by hep Verlag in cooperation with the Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (SFIVET). mySkillbox is an online learning platform for "ABU" lessons ("allgemeinbildender Unterricht" - general education lessons). The interface offers the possibility of logging onto the platforms with a hep login. Licences for mySkillbox can be obtained directly via the hep website - by teachers & learners.

beook is an online learning environment and partner organisation of hep Verlag. hep offers users various products that can be redeemed at beook with a coupon code. The code is either printed on a book cover or can be purchased separately as an e-learning tool. Users can either log in to beook with the login data of their hep user account or redeem the coupon directly in the beook app. With an API interface, beook accesses the website of hep Verlag and recognises which coupons have been redeemed. In this way, users have access to the redeemed products (e-learning materials) in the beook learning environment and can work with them directly.

In addition to the products, the website also presents hep Verlag itself and provides an overview of the services offered. For example, a likeable presentation of the employees serves to present hep Verlag as an employer.

The collaboration has resulted in a longer-term partnership. Since the implementation of the website, hep Verlag has relied on novu as a digital partner agency. In this way, further developments, additions and adjustments are made on an ongoing basis.