Al Khaleej - Drupal Digital Newspaper Experience

Goals and Requirements

Strategy

After aligning their KPIs and technical requirements - we agreed that removing silos between their technical and non-technical team members was critical to achieving a seamless content publishing experience.

Design

While paying homage to the traditional content structure of newspapers; our UI/UX team enabled Al Khaleej to bring news to life through beautiful imagery, content layouts, video, and intuitive mobile-first user experience - whilst adhering to Core Web Vitals.

Development

Enabled the content publishing, marketing, and technical teams to coordinate seamlessly thanks to the content publishing and moderation workflow features built into Varbase CMS.

Support, Maintenance, and Growth

• Ongoing support, maintenance, tracking, and reporting to the client.
• On-Site SEO services and consultancy.
• DevOps led initiative to provide continuous delivery and implementation of upgrades and updates when necessary.
• Reach wider audiences through account-based marketing best practices and marketing automation technologies.

Challenges

Content Structure and SEO

Al Khaleej's legacy website suffered from outdated content structure-related issues that led to numerous penalties over the years due to neglect and lack of maintenance. Our design and development teams made it their priority to address this challenge by developing a tailored, yet flexible, content structure according to best practices and standards.

Non-Responsive Design

From static pages to non-responsive layouts on mobile, and PDF assets replacing what should have been rich and dynamic webpages. The legacy website caused much frustration to the newspaper readers and our UI/UX team endeavored to create an intuitive UI/UX for the newspaper.

Support and Maintenance

Over the years, the legacy Al Khaleej website slowly deteriorated from a lack of essential updates and upgrades that should be monitored and delivered consistently. We had to ensure that the new digital experience would have the right infrastructure and ability to evolve from day one.

Frustrating UX

Al Khaleej's website visitors suffered from spam and obstructing elements in their UX due to the rigidness of the ads that Al Khaleej relies upon to generate online revenue. Their digital marketers needed more flexibility to place ads in a contextual and smarter way - by integrating ad placement in a far more intelligent UX design system.

Lack of Editorial Best Practices

The Al Khaleej content publishing and editorial teams suffered from the restrictive and slow nature of uploading news. With the pace of news breaking at blinding speed these days - this challenge has become more imperative to fix ASAP. Luckily, Al Khaleej chose Varbase CMS for its seamless content management, publishing, and moderation workflows.

Digital Marketing and Content Promotion

Al Khaleej needed to overhaul its approach towards marketing and communication. They realized that one size doesn't fit all and didn't want to contribute to the content fatigue that their readers experience every day. Vardot presented them with options tailored towards automating a more intelligent approach of communication through Campaign Studio - our omnichannel marketing automation tool.

Tight Deadline and Timeframe

With Dubai Expo 2020, National Day celebrations, and more, Al Khaleej has their hands full of newsworthy events. They needed to be armed with a tailored CMS that can launch their new website quickly due to the tight timeline they faced.

This is where Varbase comes in.

What We Did

Digital Newspaper Experience

Transforming Al Khaleej into a reader-first digital experience required 4 months of research and insight analysis from our team. This intimate study into user preferences and behavior ensured that we prioritized key UX issues in the new Drupal site:

• Page loading is faster than ever
• Enhanced personalization features
• User and search engine-friendly content categorization
• Accessibility features for all readers
• Social sharing features
• Intuitive design across all screen sizes

Smarter Email Marketing, Newsletters, and Segments

Al Khaleej can now implement account-based marketing automation best practices by instantly creating smart reader segments based on intent, behavior, and reader actions on their website. Using Campaign Studio's intelligent campaign builder they can send automated bespoke newsletters, digests, and content tailored to each segment via:

• Email
• Social Media Channels
• SMS

Moreover, Al Khaleej can easily personalize messages and notifications to each user based on their navigation on their website.

Eliminating Silos and Enhancing Performance with Drupal Technology

Varbase CMS is tailored to the critical requirements of media and publishing enterprises - packed with hundreds of media-centric modules and features.

• User-friendly and multilingual backend UX for all departments involved in content publishing (technical and non-technical)
• Seamless content publishing and moderation based on user roles and permissions defined by the actual editorial experience
• Best-in-class content editorial tools
• Robust rich media management for hi-res images and video formats

Highlighted KPIs