Their Success With Duda
doo integrated with Duda to offer their customers a custom-branded website builder cohesively paired with their SaaS offering.
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200%
boost in customer adoption of website builder
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Expanded their product offerings
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50
new use cases for product development
About doo.net
Events Management platforms need to deliver services under time-sensitive conditions. Speed and efficiency matter. And when your customers plan, host and manage over 25,000 events a year, an efficient workflow becomes non-negotiable. Such is the case for doo, a SaaS platform specializing in digital event management solutions based in Germany.
Challenges
Even though doo previously offered websites along with their events management software, they were underwhelmed by their previous website builder solution. Although serviceable, the limitations of their original website builder caused challenges not only for doo, but also their customers.
The first issue was a disjointed user experience, due to the previous platform's inability to seamlessly integrate with doo's web application, doo.net. Anytime users wanted to access the website builder, they were required to visit a separate website, not under doo's brand, where they would have to create and use a separate login to continue. There was no single sign-on option, and the overall user experience was inconsistent and confusing.
Next, a lack of template customization options left doo without the design flexibility needed to create a wide variety of design assets for thousands of events. And lastly, with limited widget options available, sites built using doo's prior platform lacked breadth in terms of functionality. doo quickly realized that they would have to find another website builder solution that enabled them to build sites as robust as their events management software.
"The website builder was a sore subject for our company and a major challenge for our customers who needed event websites," says Christian Schönknecht, doo's Head of Product.
Finding a Better Platform
Through the challenges they experienced with their original platform, doo developed a clear understanding of what tools and features they would look for in the next. They were looking for:
- A drag and drop editor, for intuitive web design.
- User-friendliness, to ensure their new website builder was easy to use regardless of technical expertise.
- High-quality widgets, for better website functionality.
- SSO, for a simplified, cohesive user experience.
- White Label Tools & Features, for a custom-branded user experience that showcased the doo brand.
- Content Collection, to facilitate faster, programmatic web design.
"We wanted to create beautiful websites programmatically with customer data collected during onboarding that integrated effectively with our technology and encouraged adoption of our core offering," says Schönknecht.
If they were to discover a website builder platform that met all of their requirements, doo would be able to offer a website builder to their customers that was fast, flexible and fully under their brand. The web design process would improve dramatically for both doo and their customers - an all-around success.
Why Duda?
Upon discovering Duda from an online search, doo's team reached out to a number of web professionals who had switched from various proprietary web design platforms to Duda. doo intended to get a firsthand account of what the integration process would entail as well as learn the ways in which Duda's tools and features had improved each pros' workflow.
After hearing multiple accounts of excellent quality of support, dedicated account management, and how a diverse range of purpose-built tools facilitated faster website building with shorter development times for SaaS platforms, it became clear that it was time to make the switch to Duda.
"Duda offered stability, easy editing, and a rich collection of features that made the process of building beautiful websites quick and uncomplicated, " says Schönknecht.
Fast, Smooth Integration
Using Duda's flexible API, doo integrated their core technology with the Duda platform. This allowed the SaaS platform to finally offer the full spectrum of their software and web design solutions entirely under their brand, with an SSO option for easy customer access to the website builder. As part of the integration process, which was smooth and straightforward, Duda provided a Dedicated Account Manager to onboard doo's delivery team and train them on the Duda platform.
Building Duda Sites with SaaS
doo offers a "do it with me (DiWM)" website building service, in which the SaaS platform creates a draft of the site before handing it off to their customers to publish. A typical workflow begins with doo using Duda's content collection form to gather customer information to be displayed on the site. From there, they can take this information and populate a custom-designed template with it, quickly creating a draft of the site. Each template can also include widgets that house their software, as well as some type of technology their customers' might offer depending on the type of event.
Once the draft has been created, doo's customers can access the website to add additional images and text, prepare for the site for publishing, and take over the editing process using Duda's role-based client permissions, which enable the end customer to manage their own content. From initial development to hand off, the process usually takes doo only 2-3 weeks to get one of their customers up and running. And in using Duda, doo's customers are able to edit site content without needing technical expertise.
Advanced Use Cases
With Duda as their web design platform, doo is better equipped to accommodate customers who have more advanced design requirements for their events. For example, the SaaS company is able to build proof-of-concept (PoC) sites for complex use cases.
"For a larger retail chain in Germany, we provided a PoC that included a page displaying all events happening across all locations, and subpages showing events happening only at a specific outlet," Schönknecht remarks. "We did this by creating events in our multi-tenant registration system and pushing the data automatically into Duda's Content Library."
Product Marketing & Upsell Opportunities
Because doo's customer base is as varied as the range of events they manage, the SaaS company uses a direct sales model. Each customer is paired with a sales manager, who will create custom offers based on their unique needs. doo also offers upsell packages including 30-90 minute platform training sessions and custom, on-site training at their customers' places of business.
In their marketing efforts, doo positions the Duda platform's ease of use, robust editing tools, personalization engine and Dynamic Pages as major benefits of using their website builder. And amongst competitors offering similar web design services, doo lauds speed of provisioning sites as well as Duda's robust editing capabilities as major advantages.
"Both our sales and our delivery team are technically knowledgeable, but not real coders," says Schönknecht. "Duda's drag & drop editor allowed easy provisioning of event websites for demo purposes, as well as onboarding of customers."
Benefits
Event websites are unique in the sense that they typically remain live only for the life of the event, after which customers are manually offboarded on a case by case basis. For repeat customers who typically hold one large event per year, doo can "repurpose" the website by saving it then modifying its design to match the next event. Since moving to the Duda platform, doo can complete this process in significantly less time than with their previous platform.
An additional benefit doo has seen in a short amount of time is a 200% increase in adoption of their DiWM service. doo largely attributes this upsurge in usage to Duda's user-friendlier drag and drop editor and tools offering more-flexible design.
"Duda's website customization tools enabled us to build more custom websites," says Schönknecht. "This helped us increase customer acquisition and build more projects."
On the market, doo has also been able to differentiate itself amongst smaller-size clients by offering a more feature-rich way to build a "one-off" website.
Looking to the future
With Duda as their web design option, the possibilities for creating new products are expanding. Currently, doo is developing products for over 50 use cases. Up next, a registration application that enables event organizers to share collateral between different design modules within an app, rather than having to upload the same assets to each module individually.
In teaming up with Duda, doo has finally found the efficiency that had been missing from their web design workflow. If websites were once offered as a limited add-on to core services, they now stand as a fantastic web design solution and a first-rate service.
"We are very pleased with Duda, " says Schönknecht. "We can offer a more complete solution to our customers where websites were a major pain point in the past."
