Kfzteile24 rebranding
Project date: 2023
Kfzteile24
kfzteile24 is a Berlin-based international e-commerce company specializing in automotive spare parts and accessories. It operates through its main brand kfzteile24.de in Germany and secondary brands autoteile24.at (Austria) and carpardoo in France, the Netherlands, and Denmark, serving both BTBC and BTB customers.
Making revenues around €200+ million and roughly 2 monthly website visits, kfzteile24 is one of Europe’s leading online auto parts retailers within the broader k24 Group.
The challenge
I came to work for Kfzteile24 as the team lead of the UI/UX department. During my 3 years in the company, I had the chance to work on and direct many projects. Although the rebranding was one of the most complex ones.
After more than 10 years with the kfzteile24.de brand on the market without many changes, it came time to give the brand a new look that will resonate with the Zeitgeist of modern times:
• Going from only “car” focus to mobility.
• Going from offering “products”, to solutions.
• Going from being “passive” , to building relationships with our customers.
My contribution to the rebrand
Leading and coordinating several teams
Executing the rebrand required aligning several departments with more than 20 people directly involved. The process lasted almost 3 years, starting at a conceptual and strategic level, then going into executing mode, and finally releasing the project to our customer base.
In this context, as UI/UX team lead, I took care of coordinating our department with brand and marketing, ensuring the vision and new identity guidelines would be implemented by our customer-facing cross-functional teams across our products in the Web and Native devices, and ultimately ensuring the project was executed safely, safeguarding the performance of the platform metrics.
Research involved in the rebrand process
Within the UI/UX team, we also had dedicated research. Broadly, we will research audiences, carry out user experience audits, perform usability tests of new features, conduct surveys … the typical functions of research, but specifically for this project, we validated with Kfzteile24 customers the rebrand concept end-to-end, helping the brand and marketing team to validate the concept and fine-tune it. This meant specifically testing the new brand core values with our customers, finding which values they responded better to, validating the design concepts and changes, and A/B testing the final implementation.
User experience and user interface
When I joined Kfzteile24 in 2021, we were fragmented in terms of the tooling we were using ( Sketch on the web, cross-functional team, and Adobe XD in our Native apps ), and also, there was no source of truth for the user interface components across teams.
I mediated to bring all teams under on single design tool, Figma, and onboarded them into the creation of a design system. These two initiatives made the process of rebranding our products much easier.
With our web designs, iOS and Android app designs, all in one environment, and a well-documented design system, it became really easy to apply the new changes, especially since we already developed a theme set-up in Figma to accommodate all the other K-24 group brands. ( kfzteile24, autoteile24, carpardoo)
Desktop Kfzteile24.de website
The rebranding focused on the main German and Austrian markets. The website went through a total update across the complete customer journey.
Complete journey designs
Mobile Kfzteile24.de website
Complete journey designs
IOS & Android apps
Visual lenguage and illustration
The rebrand not only meant a simple logo refresh, but also a complete change in communication strategy and visual language. A good example was the redesign of our Apple and Android stores.
Another highlight of this project was the accurate date that we gathered A/B testing the changes since, I was also the lead for conversion optimization on the web platforms.
Conversion optimization
During my 3 years at Kfzteile24, I developed a deep expertise in the A/B testing and conversion optimization field. I was responsible for the tools and contracts, as well as for the collaboration with agencies and partners.
This gave me an incredible chance to learn different tooling & conversion strategies, and overall get a deep understanding of psychology, statistics, and conversion best practices. Some of the best performing test I carried out:
Mobile app banner placement and design.
A/B: +1000% CTR
Price structure, Search, and CTA color combinations.
MVT: +10% Revenue | +7% Transaction
Wishlist button reduction ( Mobile ).
A/B: +6.57% Revenue | +1.85% Add to Cart
Impact of the Rebrand project
The release of the rebranding lasted several months, since we conducted several A/B tests on the website before we were sure the web metrics weren’t negatively affected. Through the process, we found chances for optimization, and some of the rebranding updates included small changes that especially improved the web platform.
Remarkably, we were able to increase the organic installs by implementing the new redesign banners, also we were able to improve noticeably the call to action area in the product description pages, especially on mobile devices.
≃+5% uplift on organic app installs
≃+5% add to cart & revenue improvement
Improvement of kfzteile24.de web readability and information architecture
My influence as a Team Lead
During my 3 years at Kfzteile24, I grew its UI/UX team, mentored different profiles from junior to senior and staff level designers and researchers, created better alignment and processes, and ran a successful conversion optimization program for the company, both helping to clarify design decisions and making a meaningful impact on key company metrics.
Move the career forward and mentor a team of 6 people
Create better aligment in and outside of the department
Drove the conversion optimization practise in the company with 400% ROI
Thanks for giving it the time to look at this project. Special thanks for; Just Beyer, Andreas Schwarz, Robin Katzenberger, Dominika Sztorc & Shu Ho Chan among other great people I got to work with at K-24 group.
