Making it as a lifestyle portal is tough nowadays. Fighting the tiky-toky endless feeds is a lost cause right from the start. Correct?
Wrong. Turns out that if your lifestyle hub for all things cool is… well, cool enough, people will flock towards it. Journal ([žùrnāl]? damn it!) is all about fashion and trends, travel, critical social topics and the likes. And obviously its editors have been doing their editing pretty darn well because the website has been on the rise. But there was ample evidence it could do even better. Hello, Human.
Let’s hop on a call and exchange ideas. We’re curious. And we don’t bite. Promise.
We had a nice little brand discovery workshop with Journal and found out they wanted to expand regionally and we wanted to be the catalyst of that expansion with a website redesign. This meant:
Talk about a custom web. Look and feel was essential so we did many, many moodboard iterations. Many. Cleaned up the grid and layout with tidy navigation and clear hierarchy, new typography, highly functional aesthetics. UX UI got a boost and some non-intrusive advertising positions found their place inside the grid. ‘Cause you want that ka-ching sound to be loud and crisp.
Our final design consists of 30 modular building blocks that can be used and customized through the website. The technical solution enables easy content management on multiple markets while reducing editors’ workload and improving site speed.
What makes this show run is an intuitive new CMS with 30+ modular content blocks. It has endless possibilities for editors and provides a rich user experience for visitors. This thing is super intuitive, enables easy creation of custom pages, reduces editor’s workload and improves site speed. And it’s not a pain in the app for onboarding. Editors loved it, users loved the result. Bingo.
Journal can now launch in Japan overnight if it wishes so, with all editors and readers having the same exceptional experience. Behind the portal is one central backend solution for all languages and all market needs, ready for scaling up. Package includes autonomy, speed and flexibility for all future markets.
All that planning was worth it because the new Journal is as smooth as butter. Rich in content on the outside, it’s simple and modular on the inside, multilingual and ready for growth. Internationalization magic works as a charm. For the first time, the portal is live outside of Croatia with Journal.rs online and Journal.si currently loading.
The client expected a 25% increase in income from sponsored content within 6 months.
We delivered a 50% income increase in the first 3 months.
For those of you who dislike numbers: we've doubled up on the expectations in half the time allocated.
Go visit Journal.
It’s worth it.
Faster load times make users happy
So they become more loyal, and return often
So thay can focus on creating great content
Within just 3 months from launch