THE CASE:
InStyle.de
The Smart Shopping Platform For The German-Speaking World InStyle.de is all about fashion, beauty, lifestyle and stars — with direct links to shopping opportunities inspired by the latest trends and styles. Videos from the world of InStyle, and an exclusive fashion and lifestyle blog offer site visitors additional value.
Trends & Lifestyle
InStyle.de is the versatile, inspiring go-to location for quick reviews of the latest trends, valuable incentives, and expert advice and tips for individual fashion and style.
Shopping Experiences
In addition to the latest fashion and beauty trends, InStyle.de offers the perfect shopping experience with direct links to its own Shop, where fashionistas can find all must-have items at a glance.
Interaction
InStyle.de differentiates itself from competing websites through a prominent blog column and MyStyle, a community app that helps people share their own styles via Facebook, while adding comments to other users’ contributions. How-to videos, with easy-to-follow beauty tips and tricks, are also very popular with the InStyle.de user community.
Key Stats
THE CHALLENGE:
Complex Maintenance And Support
The InStyle.de product team is responsible for maintaining the web presence of Burda’s luxury brands InStyle, Elle and Harper’s Bazaar. The Challenge: Each of the three brand properties had their own content management system (CMS). This meant that the same small team had to deploy all updates, new releases and applications into three separate CMS, wasting significant time and resources.
Outdated Web Design
InStyle.de’s existing web presence had not been optimized for smartphones. Long load times and limited interactive features significantly impacted the overall user experience. Users had to click, rather than scroll through content as on many websites today. This was a real issue for InStyle.de, where experience showed that the majority of traffic was generated through social media, suggesting that many visitors were browsing the InStyle.de website on their mobile device. The outdated web design prevented users from scrolling through content and enjoy an enriched browsing experience, as related articles were not linked to each other or other content. This resulted in shorter visits, and high abandonment rates.
Insufficient Scope For Interactive Storytelling And Native Advertising
With its obsolete design, InStyle’s web presence no longer reflected the overall brand identity, which is defined by superior visual language and modern appearance. InStyle.de also lacked native advertising, interactive storytelling or any other features advertisers look for to improve exposure for their products. The website also needed to add affiliate links in a way that was neither intrusive nor overloaded, integrating revenue-generating affiliate campaigns while offering added value to users.
One CMS for All Products
Hubert Burda Media needed one CMS platform for all their web properties, freeing time and resources to focus on value-added updates and improvements.
Changing User Behavior
The website had not been designed to leverage the full growth potential of social media and mobile.
Disrupting the Old Way
InStyle.de wanted to break free from its traditional internet presence and give itself more headroom from relevant, in-context advertising and content integration. The aim was clearly to optimize the execution of marketing campaigns and improve KPIs such as CTR and visibility.
THE SOLUTION:
A CMS From Publishers, For Publishers
Hubert Burda Media developed the open-source Thunder CMS based on its own requirements for innovative publishing technology. Thunder has since become the first open-source online CMS from publishers, for publishers. Thunder is a Drupal distribution based on the new version 8 of the framework, released in November 2015. It features a range of publisher-centric Drupal modules with custom enhancements.
Worldwide Cooperation: The Thunder Coalition
With the launch of the new CMS, Burda is creating a worldwide coalition open to publishers, industry partners, and developers. All members of the Thunder Coalition can reap the benefits of worldwide collaboration from a vibrant Thunder user community, creating custom extensions and sharing them with the Coalition to further enhance Thunder. Thunder users already have access to a whole range of channel- and feature-specific enhancements developed with industry partners such as Acquia or Riddle.com.
Key features
Responsive Web Design
Riddle Interactive Content
Infinity Theme – developed and provided by InStyle
Pilot Project InStyle.de
InStyle.de was the first Burda brand property to develop its new web presence exclusively on the Thunder CMS, building on experiences from the Playboy.de product team and their development efforts for their own migration to Thunder. InStyle.de thus became the first platform to generate tangible value from the Thunder Coalition. Other Thunder Coalition members include Elle, Harper’s BAZAAR, Facebook, nexx.tv, Riddle.com, and Acquia.
THE PROCESS:
Pooling of Resources
Implementing Thunder was fast and easy. Seven people were involved altogether, including stakeholders from editorial, product management, brand management, as well as front- and back-end developers.
Flexible Implementation of Publisher-Centric Features
The entire redesign process took approximately 3.5 months. InStyle.de was first relaunched with a reduced feature set, which was then extended iteratively with additional relevant features. As 69% of the traffic is generated through social media, the initial focus was to adapt the platform to social user expectation. For InStyle.de, this meant fast load speeds, seamless readability on mobile devices, and easy and fast sharing of articles between users. The core features used by editors had to work seamlessly from the moment the platform was launched. This small set of core features was key in accelerating the InStyle.de relaunch with Thunder.
Iterative Enhancements of the CMS
From day one, InStyle.de was leveraging the features provided by Drupal 8 and the Thunder Core Team. They were also able to re-use modules developed by Playboy.de during their migration to Thunder, which included an integration with the German advertising audit bureau IVW and adequate ad server configuration. This provided the foundation for a complete InStyle.de website redesign by the product team, aligning it with the brand image and user expectations. Other members of the Thunder Coalition benefited in turn from the creations and lessons learned by the InStyle.de team. Now the time for a complete website relaunch can be shortened to just a few weeks—depending on data migration time and legacy CMS.
THE RESULT:
Flexible Social Media Integration
For editors, Thunder opens up new possibilities for mobile storytelling: Posts and videos from sources such as Instagram, Facebook or YouTube can be integrated in a single click. Editorial teams now have the tools they need to tell interactive, exciting stories based on their own content or social media, and to engage readers with the InStyle brand.
Innovative CMS Technology with Custom Features for Publishers
The responsive web design empowers editors to publish articles easily, wherever they are. Users benefit from the modern and flexible front end, with seamless browsing experience whatever the device. As a Thunder Coalition partner, Riddle contributed tools that allow editors to quickly create interactive content such as surveys, lists, quizzes, or personality tests—with no support needed from web designers or programmers. Users’ answers are easy to interpret, too. Now InStyle.de has a much better knowledge of its readership profile and can easily pinpoint popular content.
Modern Web Design Developed and Powered by InStyle
InStyle.de developed the Infinity theme for its relaunch. The clear, uncluttered design simplifies navigation while endless scrolling and related articles invite users to remain on the site. Content from advertising partners can be flexibly integrated to fit seamlessly into InStyle’s attractive look-and-feel, without disrupting the narrative.
A State-of-the-Art, Modern, Interactive CMS—Custom-Made for Publishers
InStyle.de’s CMS improvements and new features are now available to all members of the Thunder Coalition, who can use them straight away or as the foundation for developing their own features, which they can, in turn, share with the community. Industry partners including Acquia or Riddle.com are contributing valuable extensions, meaning Thunder is constantly evolving and gaining new and innovative modules and enhancements.
THUNDER – The First Open-Source CMS From Publishers For publishers
Save Resources on Technical Issues, and Focus on Content and Brands
Hubert Burda Media believes that publishers do not compete through technology, but through content and brands. Technology is rather a limiting factor for publishers, not least because Content Management Systems have a very high TCO and new version launches can take substantial time and money.
Free and Community-Driven Features
In 2016, Hubert Burda Media established the Thunder Coalition for publishers to join forces by sharing code and innovation power. Coalition members develop value-added modules, using them for their own purpose and sharing them with the community under the GNU General Public License, while industry partners contribute software and services on a Freemium basis. These partners may also offer additional premium functionality, which publishers might want to use and pay for.
Maintenance by Experts
Burda will not collect any user data – data sovereignty remains solely with the brand using Thunder. Burda chose to make Thunder publicly available in order to foster cooperation within the publishing industry. There is no business or revenue-generating model behind the initiative. The distribution is maintained by the Thunder Core Team who decides which modules to add or remove, while ensuring open-source availability of core functionality.
A Shared Standard for Media and Publishing Houses
Burda wants to establish a culture of cooperation and sharing within the publishing industry. Other publishers are invited to join the Thunder Coalition by contributing software and know-how. Neither Hubert Burda Media nor the other publishers in the Coalition will charge anyone for their contributions. Nevertheless, publishers who use Thunder can decide which parts of their development effort they make public. Our objective is to make Thunder the shared standard for media and publishing houses around the world.