Fresh product information and a digital showroom for Reka Kaapeli

Fresh product information once a day

Reka provides cable solutions for renewable energy production, network construction, industrial environments, and residential and office construction. Reka’s customers are a very specific target group, and the renewed reka.fi website serves as a showroom for the company’s products: the products cannot be purchased directly from the site, but they can be viewed and browsed there. Product data sheets can also be downloaded from the website.

At the heart of the new reka.fi website is the Adeona PIM product system, which contains all product information for Reka’s products and which customers can search for on the site using various filters. We built an integration between the reka.fi website and the Adeona PIM API (REST API) to automate the updating of product data. The integration we implemented eliminates the need to maintain a large amount of product data in two different places, and now product data is updated from PIM to the website once a day.

“Hion was selected as the implementer of the website renewal because you responded clearly to our needs in the tender phase, and your integration expertise and experience with large website projects convinced us. We also felt Hion’s good spirit and enthusiasm from the first meeting.”
–Sanna Jaakkola, Marketing and Communications Manager, Reka Kaapeli Oy

From Drupal to WordPress

Before the renewal, Reka Kaapeli’s old website started to be at the end of it’s life cycle. It was built on Drupal, and it’s support was soon about to end. Reka had also adopted a new product management system, that they wanted to integrate to their website.

Reka wanted to change their content management system also to improve the user experience of administrators and content management. The modular page templates of WordPress would be easier to edit and utilize, and the overall operational reliability better.

“There were challenges with maintaining the old site, e.g. the page templates and functionalities did no longer respond to our evolving needs. So it was a natural moment to start the renewal and freshen up the visual look at the same time.”, explains Reka’s marketing and communications manager Sanna Jaakkola.

The starting point and goals

The goal of the renewal was to build an easy to use website that would serve all of Reka’s target groups, and where all of Reka’s domains would be controlled through one user interface. Reka was also wishing to simplify the site structure, so that the customers could access the product information more effortlessly.

The main goals for the renewal:

• improving the user experience and engagement of the website visitors
• improving the admins’ and content management’s user experience
• improving technical operational reliability
• improving search engine optimization and visibility

Integrations and most important functionalities

We built the reka.fi website using WordPress as a multisite solution, ensuring that all of the client’s sites can be managed through a single admin interface. We designed the new site’s user interface with a focus on product information search, and the site’s structure aligns better with the needs of Reka Kaapeli’s customers: product information is easily accessible, and customer journeys are streamlined.

We also conducted a migration of specified content from the old Drupal website. This involved transferring multilingual news and reference content published across various domains and language versions from the old site to the new WordPress website. Furthermore, we designed and implemented the website’s admin interface to be user-friendly and modular in structure, enabling the production of rich content with maximum flexibility on the new reka.fi website.

RediPress search engine

The search functionality of the revamped reka.fi was precisely defined in collaboration with the client. This ensured that its dynamically updating tools (filters and other selections) are built on top of continuously updating product data. At the heart of the new web service is an advanced search function, powered by the RediSearch engine we implemented, known as RediPress.

Integrations and language versions

We implemented an integration to Reka’s Vine CRM system for the new website. This CRM system manages functions such as reka.fi’s chatbots, cookies/cookie notifications, and marketing automation.

Reka.fi also has multiple language versions. In addition to Finnish, the site has five other language versions: English, Swedish, Danish, Russian, and Norwegian. The language versions were implemented using the Polylang multilingual plugin.

How did we do?

We at Hion are also pleased with the WordPress website renewal we carried out in collaboration with Reka. A successful project always requires time and effort from both the supplier and the client, and in this project, Reka had allocated sufficient time and resources to support our work. This contributed to the smooth progress of the website project within the schedule. During the project, additional development needs emerged, so we will continue our successful collaboration with Reka.

“Collaborating with Hion was smooth from the very beginning. We received prompt and expert answers to questions that arose during the project. We are particularly pleased with the excellent communication, the steering group practices, and the systematic documentation of the project. It was also great that you reminded us of upcoming deadlines during the project, which helped ensure the project progressed smoothly and on schedule,” summarizes Sanna Jaakkola.