Miljømærkning Danmark - A Headless service platform

Miljømærkning Danmark needed an updated digital visual identity and a platform with a fully dynamic and automated integration to their product database with more than 55.000 products across their two major Ecolabel trademarks.

Business, marketing, and editors were caught with an outdated monolith governance and infrastructure – Along with an outdated CMS that wasn't very sustainable. Not a perfect situation for an organisation working to propagate holistic lifecycle and a brighter future through environmentally controlling and labelling.

Sustainability is not only found in what we eat, but to a large extent also in what we construct, wear, stay in, and sit on – just to mention a few examples.
The world is changing drastic now a days, unfortunately not for the better, and we all need to act more responsibly.

Miljømærkning Danmark is a major player, not only in Denmark, but globally, and they both certify and assist brands in transitioning to environmentally friendly manufacturing and processing practices.

To achieve this, they needed a digital presence and user experience to reflect their overall mission statement; “a driving force for environmentally sustainable manufacturing”

The purpose is important and actually quite simple - we need to attract even more businesses and organizations to start a certification process with either Svanemærket or EU-Blomsten, and the consumers to demand sustainable products even more when ordering, buying and consuming in general.

Miljømærkning Danmark had several challenges with their existing website. Both in terms of maintenance, implementation of new functionalities, and digital governance. Furthermore, there was an expectation of expanding their business enhancing their digital presence, increasing their relevance, and addressing critical SEO performance issues.

An important insight and driver in the strategic process was that even though the two eco-labels have an extensive knowledge in the market (up to 96 %), they actually suffer from a very low qualified knowledge (68 %). The users visiting the website felt that it was extremely difficult to distinguish the two eco-labels from each other due to an unclear visual identity, mixed content execution, and unclear value proposition and positioning among the two.

That’s why we performed in dept user journeys across different businesses and consumer segments to secure different needs and behavior that we could transfer into a strategic framework and concept for the three different websites. Through qualitative research, we gained valuable insights with important stakeholders and knowhow into specific industries and product areas.

Our insights were condensed into a digital vision, strategic content pillars, and a brand new three domain strategy - with an overall goal to educate and raise awareness to Holistic Life Cycle nationally and internationally.

We have developed a completely new UX and design system and a headless architecture with dynamic data-integration to their CPD. Going headless were the obvious choice for realizing a more sustainable and editor-friendly CMS platform – and a necessity to implement a three domain solution being flexible and editor-friendly with an uniformed backend content database.

The platform is fully integrated with a CDP (EWR) with more than 55.000 products available, key requirements, and detail specification. It is structured in dynamic modules which offers the editors endless page compositions and frontend views as a result.

Our insights showed that the user experience relied on an efficient search function, and up to 60% started their user journey using the search function. Therefore we have implemented Algolia site search for both editor content and dynamic assets. This has resulted in highly responsive feedback for all possible use case inputs. The content concept aims to secure an immersive experience with contextual cases with no dead ends in the IA and sitemap implementation.

All three web applications and integration layers are cloud hosted in a load-balanced environment with flexible load capacity. This cloud environment also ensures a responsible hosting solution.

In summary, the choice of using a headless technology stack has made it possible to launch a three domain web platform, a revitalized digital identity, and a responsible website that manages to guide the users through appealing and more relevant content. With the purpose to inspire to a more sustainable and holistic life cycle manufacturing and for the consumers to demand eco-labelled products, they have got a brand new and flexible platform built for the future.

The work with Miljømærkning Danmark has resulted in a brand new headless platform with a unified CMS backend for easy content distribution, endless editorial possibilities, and strong governance. This made it possible to publish three new website for Svanemærket, EU-Blomsten og Miljømærkning Danmark as organisation.

Approximately 80 % off the content is dynamically imported to support updates on regulatory changes, launching new products, and updating legal requirements to certifications. As for the vision, the organisation has moved from not only being a controller and issuer of Ecolabel certifications, to also become a business partner helping brands to growth – and ensuring environmentally goals.

With the headless technology and an API architecture, the web platform has performed significantly better with loadtime improvements that is up to 6 times faster compared to their old monolith CMS.

And even more, Miljømærkning Danmark has moved from dark to green impact with the implementation of modern technology.