Sound Expressed in Full

Insight

To buy great sound, you need to experience great sound.

Sennheiser’s innovative audio solutions focus on immaculate German engineering. To engage with a new audience of audio enthusiasts who desire premium, human and lifestyle experiences to connect with brands requires a shift.

Craft and engineering should be elevated and complemented through rich storytelling. An approach is required to connect with this new audience whilst staying true to existing Sennheiser fans.

Idea

Together, Sennheiser and AKQA designed, piloted and scaled a direct-to-consumer e-commerce flagship vision.

A balance between premium lifestyle experiences and quality audio engineering, visitors are invited to discover Sennheiser’s solutions on their terms. Through high-end visuals, 3D product decompositions, smart search and compare tools.

30% quicker design system integration.

A MACH/headless commerce solution was developed to carve out more time for discovery, simplicity and seamlessness. Hygraph CMS, Shopify Plus and Netlify create the core infrastructure to allow an API-driven experience that minimises development, deployment and internal IT involvement.

The redesigned MVP shopping experience prioritises premium touches like 3D product discovery, integrated e-payment methods, and optimisations for mobile.

Headless architecture to drive e-commerce performance.

To deliver a best-in-class platform requires a best-in-class technical solution. A bespoke front-end experience was prioritised by minimising custom back-end development. With the help of out-of-the-box APIs from trusted, secure and scalable partners, no restrictions were faced from pre-existing templates, allowing time to be invested in building custom services like the product comparison tool.
 Made to balance emotional storytelling and functional needs, the tool now directs 5% of all online sales.

No DevOps, no problem.

By implementing a MACH architecture, 90% of the hosting set-up and maintenance was provided by out-of-the-box solutions. Additionally, dependencies were reduced between internal IT and external technology teams by adding the security, scalability and stability of partner software products.

Beyond speed in the set-up, automation also helped accelerate the go-to-market timeline. Advanced automation helped test the code quality, website performance, sustainability index and visual difference automatically up to 40 times a day. This empowered the team to correct issues as they occurred while preventing technical debt, reducing manual QA time by more than 60%.

Impact

Emotion, craft and intelligence let visitors experience audio in their way while connecting with the brand on their terms.

Since its initial launch, the new flagship website has been rolled out in over 25 markets globally, with more on the way.