KEMKENS
Make it easier to pick the right boiler for your home
Kemkens is one of the five service partners of Essent, which provides nationwide coverage in the areas of central heating boilers, solar energy, insulation, and ventilation.
Additionally, Kemkens employs technicians who take care of the installation and maintenance of their products. In the past year, there was a 35% growth in the sales of central heating boilers compared to 2022.
The challenge
With the exceptional growth of last year, Kemkens needed a strong foundation for all their new and existing customers.
The current CMS (Content Management System) they had was very cumbersome and intricately set up, making it difficult to maintain and implement changes. Therefore, their desire was to use the current website as a starting point and carefully examine certain processes and tools.
The solution
A new website that is also easily accessible on mobile devices. Some pages are viewed by more than 50% of visitors on mobile.
By establishing a component library and standardizing certain modules, we maintain clarity for developers and ensure the CMS remains organized.
Additionally, by critically examining and making improvements to the way certain tools and (contact) flows are set up, we enhance user-friendliness."
Where to start?
The current website was, to say the least, extensive: numerous pages, a knowledge base, a login environment, and various tools such as the decision tool for the right boiler.
So the first step was to map all of this out. This way, we could determine if the same components or sections could be used on different pages. A good example of this was the forms on the site. They appeared in multiple places, in different formats, and were not always user-friendly: some were very long, and others were not specific enough for the user.
By zooming out and mapping everything, we gained a clearer understanding of the project scope and could divide tasks into subtasks.
Mapping out the scope of the project. This is the section of all the pages containing customer service or contact.
Structure
With this overview we carefully discussed what content should be on what page. Because Kemkens had an fantastic year of growth, they were quite hesistant to make changes on their website. We could not yet measure what a new page layout would do with the conversion, but Kemkens did know what was working right now. The challenge for our UX-team was to make changes without losing trust of our stakeholders and without taking to much risks.
Wireframes: three options for the navigation of the boiler-landingspage.
Component library
In line with the current style of the website but with a fresher and lighter aesthetic, we then began developing a component library. Once established, this resulted in significant time savings in further designing the pages. The use of components ensured uniformity in design and not only improved the efficiency of our workflow but also benefited the development process later on.
A selection of the Kemkens component library
Making it easy to make your choice
The choose-your-boiler wizard was another challenge. Their existing wizard was somewhat outdated, but it was heavily utilized. However, the conversion rate was not high. Once users completed the process and received recommendations, more than 80% ultimately clicked away. Because whether the user intended to immediately finalize a purchase or simply seek advice, both forms requested a substantial amount of information. In one flow the user had to give the same information twice: once in the wizard, and once again in the final form.
Another improvement point was the results page itself. We aimed to display the specifications of the boilers in a clear format, and it should be easy to switch between buying or renting options. Furthermore, users can immediately subscribe to a maintenance contract here, and this will be reflected instantly in the module.
My take on the project
This project was certainly interesting because the scope was so extensive. And the collaboration with my other UX colleague was very enlightening. The ability to brainstorm together and provide feedback to each other certainly advanced the project.
Some ideas we had as a UX team ultimately proved to be too daring for the stakeholders, and it was insightful to navigate through that. Sometimes, small wins are good enough to start with, and lead to big changes.