GEZE: From Repairs to Results—Thanks to an Optimized Website.

With more than 3,000 employees at 213 locations in 22 countries, the German company manufactures automatic door drives and window systems and integrates them into building automation. In other words, they ensure that doors in hospitals close automatically, large entrance doors at trade fairs open, and escape and rescue routes remain smoke-free thanks to automatically opening smoke and heat extraction windows.

As the website was no longer able to meet the complex requirements and further developments were pending, GEZE sought a TYPO3 expert and turned to b13. The result: a complete system conversion that not only made the functionality more efficient and powerful, but also enabled GEZE to introduce new customer-oriented features and reduce support costs.

We spoke to Michael Mahler, Head of Digital Marketing, and Rainer Butz, New Media Systems Engineer, about how b13 revamped the digital infrastructure and restored calm and stability to the online team's workflows.

A foundation that needed to be renewed

In April 2022, GEZE's website was no longer supporting the company's goals as desired. For a company whose marketing activities—from newsletters to SEO to social media—all run through the website, this situation was slowing down digital growth.

“We had a lot of website downtime, and recovery, monitoring and improvement measures took too much time,” explains Rainer Butz.

The website ran on an outdated version of TYPO3 with many third-party and custom solutions that, especially after a few updates, no longer worked together optimally and caused problems. In addition, the performance of the website noticeably deteriorated for both website users and internally.

In the end, the GEZE team spent most of its time troubleshooting problems instead of developing new features.

In their search for help, GEZE came across b13, whose expertise as TYPO3 core developers made them the obvious choice. b13 impressed right from the start—with their openness, direct involvement of company management, and immediate understanding of complex technical issues. Michael sums it up as follows:

A systematic approach to rebuilding

b13 began by revising GEZE's deployment process to move from monthly releases to smaller, more frequent updates. Rainer explains: “This helped us immediately and contributed to reducing errors.”

The first major project was a comprehensive system analysis as part of the upgrade to TYPO3 version 10. “There was an intensive analysis beforehand to see what was affected, how complex it would be and what special features needed to be taken into account,” recalls Rainer. b13 did not limit itself to quick fixes—they systematically eliminated sources of error, as well as in-house and third-party solutions that had become problematic, and brought the installation back to TYPO3 standards as far as possible.

This methodical approach also shaped the handling of ongoing problems. Instead of working through individual tickets in isolation, b13 bundled related issues and addressed their causes. “For example, if there were several tickets relating to search problems, b13 said, ‘We're now going to look at the entire search function and completely overhaul it,’” explains Rainer. “They took a holistic view of these issues and improved them from the ground up.”

The team also renewed important integrations. This was followed by performance optimisation with CDN connectivity. The result: significantly faster loading times and backup through alternative content delivery in case the main system fails.

Stability, efficiency and room for growth

The transformation brought immediate and measurable improvements. Above all, the constant fear of system crashes disappeared. The efficiency gains were also enormous. Whereas previously several project managers were involved and several meetings took place each week, with b13, one project manager and one weekly meeting are sufficient.

Thanks to the bug fixes, GEZE was able to refocus its development resources on new features. Among other things, a product comparison tool and digital return forms were implemented. Michael explains: “We developed this with b13 so that customers can register their returns directly via the website without having to work with Excel spreadsheets.” The improved search function and new filter options further increased user-friendliness.

The importance of the partnership was also evident in emergency situations: during an operating system update over the weekend, the connection to the product database was interrupted; the b13 emergency hotline responded within an hour and restored the connection on the same day. Michael emphasizes the constant availability, short response times, and continuity of the contact persons.

The collaboration continues as GEZE envisages future optimisations, including a PDF viewer and further improvements to the user experience. For Michael, the relationship embodies exactly what he expects from a service provider:

Are you facing a website stability crisis?

If your website is becoming more of a burden than a success factor—due to frequent downtime, poor performance or technical legacy issues that prevent innovation—it's time for professional support. With b13's systematic TYPO3 approach, you can restore the stability of your website and fully exploit your digital potential.