The Challenge
Not only during the winter, our society is dependent on a smooth energy supply. This makes it all the more important for Stadtwerke Sindelfingen to be easily accessible for its customers. A seamlessly functioning website is indispensable for this purpose. In order to guarantee the functionality of the corporate website, W4's development team updated the content management system (CMS) TYPO3. For this, the TYPO3 version had to be updated from 10 to 11, which led to code differences and a restructuring of the databases. Furthermore, many custom extensions - i.e. the integration of additional applications such as the cloud-based image management tool Cloudinary - were outdated and had to be renewed.
Technical Realisation
To tackle the TYPO3 update, the IT professionals replicated the original corporate website database to a test server. Next, the update was carried out on the test system before it was synchronised with the website. This allowed W4 to ensure that all logins and extensions were compatible with the new version of the website. It also allowed the developers to fix any error messages that occurred due to code changes. With these precautions, the municipal utilities can inspire their customers with an improved user experience - even without the target group noticing. This is because the relaunch took place completely in the background, while the front end of the website remained unchanged.
Content Studio
Particularly the prospect of a gas shortage in 2022 drew public attention to the topic of energy supply. Here, it became apparent how important transparent and informative communication with the population is. Stadtwerke Sindelfingen has long been ahead of this insight. The municipal utility has already been using Facebook for communication measures since 2019 and, since 2021, the regional company has also been present on Instagram. W4 will soon have supported its client in digital communication for five years. In quarterly meetings, the content is jointly developed and recorded in the professional editorial plan. On this basis, W4's content managers create seasonal greetings, announcements of events, as well as informative posts on drinking water quality or on the contribution to renewable energy expansion. Of course, the Content Studio also reacts flexibly to requests at short notice.
With the interactive Christmas card in 2022, W4 realised the second Christmas campaign for Stadtwerke Sindelfingen. Embedded in a mailing to all of the company's partners, the digital greeting card was created in a festive design. Upon mouse click, the card opened and showed a video message from the management. With the interactive greeting card, Stadtwerke Sindelfingen sent its target group a personal Christmas message that conveys appreciation through its special format.
W4 is proud of its long-standing cooperation with the future-oriented company and looks forward to many more joint projects – from web development to content production.
