20 Minuten, the most widely read news brand in Switzerland, turned to Livingdocs for a content management system (CMS) which would be easy for journalists to use and put readers first.
The brand, which is part of the TX Group, also wanted to invest in technology which would support quality journalism.
20 Minuten reaches over 2 million readers per month and the amount of content and the range of topics covered by the editorial team is correspondingly large. However, the in-house CMS was not tailored to the needs of 20 Minuten in every respect. The brand needed to implement a modern, versatile solution that would allow for the continual evolution of the product while reducing overall systems costs.
The Livingdocs system is known for its flexibility and dynamism; every other month, new features are added — and outdated ones are removed — in order to keep the product lean and efficient.
This ever-adapting quality – along with the highly intuitive UX and lean editor – positioned Livingdocs as the perfect solution to meet the requirements articulated by 20 Minuten. In addition, Livingdocs’ approach to product development mirrors 20 Minuten’s goals for the development of their web-first publication.
The evaluation began in autumn of 2022, and once Livingdocs was chosen, this was followed by turbo-charged turnaround: development work began in March of 2023 and just under 10 months later, on January 9, 2024, 20 Minuten — along with its sister publications Le Matin, L’essentiel (DE/FR), and 20 minutes — all had gone live with Livingdocs.
Livingdocs delivered on the promise to rebuild the editorial systems of all five publications and meet all of the communicated requirements within a fair price.
What you see is it what you get interface
First and foremost, 20 Minuten wanted to replace the internally built system with a new headless CMS smoothly and without creating any blocks for ongoing editorial workflows. Thanks to Livingdocs’s streamlined product structure, 20 Minuten and its related publications and their corresponding editorial teams were all able to set up Livingdocs successfully in a matter of a few months. The flexible, adaptable nature of Livingdocs also enabled the 20 Minuten team to include new features that enriched their content, and thereby made it more attractive to readers.
20 Minuten works heavily with live tickers for breaking news and standing topics. To ensure that the editorial team would be able to continue relying on this tried-and-tested narrative form, while better integrating it into the workflows, Livingdocs developed its own ticker tool, which has been used by all five digital brands since its launch.
Thanks to the ‘what you see is what you get’ user interface of Livingdocs, 20 Minuten’s editors can create and manage their articles and pages efficiently while staying close to the end product.
Since the go-live of Livingdocs, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. The editorial team had shared that it is now fun to create content, emphasising the easy-to-use, intuitive interface and around-the-clock support from the Livingdocs team. The new system was immediately accepted by the team, and was running smoothly from the moment it was rolled out.
As Livingdocs was implemented in a managed service model, 20 Minuten is able to enjoy the advantages of an Azure-hosted set up, including bimonthly upstream releases, faster configuration options, reduction of overall systems costs and around-the-clock maintenance by the DevOps team.
Editor: ‘Planning tool saves us a lot of time’
Co-Editor-in-Chief of 20 Minuten Daniel Weldmeier said: “Livingdocs has proven that it can implement customer requests quickly. After the go-live, a short-term planning tool was developed that saves us a lot of time in organising articles and publishing them quickly. This helps the page maker to devote himself entirely to the news. Thank you for the great collaboration.”
As in all Livingdocs projects, collaboration is key in order for the new system to perfectly complement the needs of the respective customer. In the case of 20 Minuten, the system and all elements were developed in close collaboration. In fact, the entire process before and after the go-live has been an exercise of intentional co-creation.
Livingdocs offers 20 Minuten 24/7 support from its team and points of contact who bring a perfect blend of technical and customer service skills to provide assistance whether when setting up new features or troubleshooting.
Manuel Sutter, Product Manager from 20 Minuten, said one of the best things about working with Livingdocs is their easy-going yet ever-professional attitude, as well as straightforward communication and project management. He also remarked upon the value of their open-mindedness to new ideas, crucial when developing new products alongside a client.
How Livingdocs met the goals set for it by 20 Minuten
20 Minuten set Livingdocs the following challenge:
- Introduce a system that is constantly being developed and still allows for bespoke solutions
- Introduce new industry-relevant features and functionalities
- Five newspapers to be covered in one set up
- Specialised page management solution developed to solve the needs of the fast-paced newsroom
- Promote collaborative working and allow for editors to work in parallel
The results achieved by Livingdocs for 20 Minuten were the following:
- New lean, flexible and headless content management system
- Addition of news and sports tickers, as well as automatic curation of resort pages
- Smooth successful go-live of five sister publications in a matter of months
- A bespoke page management system to allow page managers to continually drive traffic through the home page
- Editors can now work collaboratively, with several people working on an article at the same time
Want to see Livingdocs in action? Learn more and schedule a demo.
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