Univers

Digital medium more than 13,000
articles for Univers Tilburg

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Digital medium with 13,000 articles for Univers

Tilburg University's independent journalistic medium

Project Informational website

Opdrachtgever Univers

Sector Media & journalism

Univers is a digital medium for readers who want to stay abreast of the latest developments in academia.

Database articles 13.000

Challenge

On Univers’ schedule was a stable, future-proof website. The new website had to be made user-friendly and clear for both editors and users. For that, the Content Management System (CMS) WordPress is very suitable. Mobile display was an important aspect here, as many website visits came via mobile. The website was in need of a new, fresh look where articles on the website were pleasant to read for visitors, on both mobile and desktop. In doing so, visitors should be encouraged to click through to other articles and be able to offer suggestions. In addition, editors must be able to easily manage the new website. In summary, it was important to get to work on both the user interface and the user experience without losing the old content.

Question

Univers has a website with lots of news articles and content. Because of the large amount of content, the old website was not user-friendly. In particular, Univers’s editors experienced hindrance in managing the website. The website was also not optimized for visitors, especially in the mobile view of the site. The old admin environment, the backend, contained many outdated and duplicate functionalities. It was messy and not secure. As a result, a lot of spam came in via comments and forms. For that reason, Univers was in need of a new website where all content, including SEO values, needed to be preserved. The challenge was that nearly 13,000 items had to be migrated to a new website. Univers’s editors already had experience with 2manydots through a previous collaboration. Because they were not satisfied with their current Internet agency, they chose to work again with 2manydots.

Solution

A new, uncluttered backend offers more flexibility for editors to write and publish articles. In the process, unnecessary features were removed to provide a fast and secure experience. Anti-spam measures in forms, for example, ensure that spam is limited as much as possible. You can also more easily change the structure and layout of the homepage, using a number of predefined templates.

Satisfied team

There are different roles within the website where, for example, an author has no rights to publish, but can only submit a text. Then the managing editor, with a different role, can check the text and finally schedule it for publication. A happy team of editors now works in a user-friendly and clear backend.

Usability

From data from Google Analytics, we looked at what users are looking for. The new design was based on this data to improve the user experience. Loading speed was also addressed for both the front and backend. In the new website, all 13,000 articles, including SEO values, were migrated which took into account Univers’s online findability. All content parts of landing pages were converted to flexible sections (ACF). Articles use the Gutenberg editor, making it easy to edit and publish articles in the backend. Also, Univers now has a “blog to social” plug-in where it is possible to publish articles to social media immediately. There are many different functionalities in this social plug-in. For example, editors can post on different channels and schedule posts.