Steelcase Delivers a Faster, More Efficient Digital Experience

ABOUT

Steelcase Inc.

Founded in 1912 and originally known as The Metal Office Furniture Company, Steelcase’s first products were — you guessed it — metal office furniture. More specifically, the company developed some of the world’s first lightweight, fireproof office furniture and accessories, like fireproof metal safes and steel wastebaskets, during a time when smoking was common indoors.

With approximately 12,000 employees, an expansive dealer community of more than 750 partners, and a revenue of $3.2 billion in 2023, Steelcase has emerged as a titan of design and innovation reshaping work environments in the office, at school, at home, and beyond.

THE CHALLENGE

Overcoming Digital Hurdles

Upon launching its latest website eight years ago, Steelcase encountered significant challenges in managing dynamic image sizing and optimization. Its growing community of dealers led to varying image control levels and image standards, creating a mosaic of inconsistencies across Steelcase’s line of 3,000 distinct products.

And then there was China’s notoriously strict digital wall of legislative actions and technology regulations. “Any data in content that has to pass through into China — it can slow performance for those users,” says Andrew Wyatt, Senior Application Engineer at Steelcase. Before leveraging the proper CDN, content access for users in China slowed to a crawl, leading to agonizingly long page loads.

Steelcase needed a better way to ensure consistent, optimized product images while reducing page load times and delivering a more intuitive experience for the end-user.

THE CLOUDINARY SOLUTION

Harnessing Cloudinary’s Diverse Capabilities

As a major global retailer with a bustling online storefront, maintaining web performance was essential. Steelcase initially chose Cloudinary for its dynamic image sizing solutions, but over the last two years, Wyatt and his team have expanded its applications. Notable implementations include programmable features like q_auto and f_auto for broad-scale image size reduction without quality loss, and automatic format transformations, respectively. Named transformations and conditional formatting were also deployed, allowing Steelcase to integrate partner images into their product cards.

Steelcase also implemented Cloudinary’s multi-CDN service to facilitate data servicing to its global website visitors by location. “A major milestone that Cloudinary has helped us to achieve is with the implementation of the China CDN,” says Wyatt. Despite China’s complex process and specific requirements for CDN implementation, Cloudinary helped facilitate a successful implementation that dramatically improved the Steelcase website performance.

THE RESULTS

Improving Performance and Enhancing the User Experience

Wyatt says the implementation of the China CDN reduced page load times for Chinese visitors from nearly a minute to just six to eight seconds. “The business impact of this is retention,” Wyatt says. “People are actually staying on the pages longer, taking a look at what’s there,” rather than abandoning their website altogether.

With the integration of Cloudinary’s solutions, Steelcase witnessed a dramatic improvement in its website’s performance. The implementation of q_auto and f_auto decreased the homepage size from approximately 11 megabytes to 970 kilobytes without compromising the user experience. The multi-CDN service ensured optimal data servicing based on user locations, improving page load speeds globally.

Wyatt says the collaboration he’s experienced with Cloudinary hasn’t been just a provider-client relationship, but a partnership built on mutual trust and shared expertise. The consistent support and guidance from Cloudinary’s team, including weekly meetings and the involvement of subject matter experts, have been pivotal in overcoming challenges and implementing successful solutions. This partnership has empowered Steelcase to offer an enhanced and consistent digital experience to its global user base, reinforcing its status as a global leader in workspace solutions.