+1m
News articles per year
380
Local newsletters
340,000
Subscribers
Nussbaum Medien is a family business that shapes local communication in Baden-Württemberg with its approx. 580 employees. With its digital platforms and solutions, the company opens up new opportunities for local authorities, associations and tradespeople to network with local people and strengthen the common good.
1959
St. Leon-Rot
Media
NUSSBAUM platform and app
Nussbaum Medien has modernised its business model with SPRYLAB as its digitalisation partner. Together, they developed the NUSSBAUM reader platform with a strong focus on hyperlocal and personalised content, including its own app.
In the search for digital offerings to complement the traditional print business, Nussbaum Medien had created a series of individual portals on various topics such as leisure, job search and charitable organisations. What was still missing was a central platform – an umbrella brand – that would provide a central point of entry into the Nussbaum world and bundle the strengths of the publishing house. The further digitalisation of the business model is a major priority for the media company because “Nussbaum Medien has relied on a kind of platform model for print for 60 years. Now it was a matter of transferring this model to digital,” explains Pascal Kollak, Head of Strategy and Innovation at Nussbaum Medien.
The declared aim of the new platform is to be the portal for local life in Baden-Württemberg. To achieve this, it must appeal to a broad readership and offer information that goes beyond the printed official gazettes. It should be a portal where all stakeholders, including local authorities, associations and businesses, can be present – a digital place that supports local communication, strengthens the common good and networks all stakeholders in the region. To achieve this goal, a standard solution with the logic of a regular news platform was not sufficient. In collaboration with SPRYLAB, a concept was developed for a customised portal with its own data architecture and features, designed to display hyper-local and personalised content such as news, feature articles, coupons and events. For Nussbaum Medien, it was crucial to find not only an implementation partner, but also a partner who could provide strategic and conceptual advice and who had extensive expertise in the publishing industry.
The biggest challenge was to implement the content display on two “axes” – geographical and interest-based – in parallel. “We want to communicate locally and offer our readers targeted, highly relevant news and information, from sports clubs to cultural events,” says Tobias Arnold, UX expert and project manager at Nussbaum Medien, explaining the challenges facing the platform architecture. The platform therefore had to be very dynamic, load quickly and be able to offer customised information depending on the location. Another focus was on being able to process the large volume of content smoothly. After all, several thousand new articles per day for over 380 cities and municipalities with around 30,000 authors who regularly upload content. The connection of the platform to Nussbaum Medien’s core system, the further development of the CMS system and the implementation of Piano as a user orchestration and paywall solution were further key requirements.
SPRYLAB developed a reader platform for Nussbaum Medien with a variety of content types that can be personalised hyperlocally. The project team focussed primarily on the integration of various data feeds and widgets that take local and national news into account. The hyperlocal displayis made possible by a so-called “Geo Wizard“. This is actively run through by all readers in order to determine the region for which they are then shown customised content in all areas.
In parallel to the platform, SPRYLAB built a hybrid app based on Capacitor to utilise components such as teaser widgets and article detail views simultaneously on the web and in the app. Piano was also integrated as a subscription solution and microservices were set up to provide various API services that enable quick access to the e-paper kiosk, for example. A fully automated input pipeline ensures the seamless processing of thousands of entities per day. The smooth interaction between the core system, which holds the content, and the new platform ensures a standardised user experience and efficient delivery of relevant content to readers.
Selected technical highlights:
The introduction of a central publishing platform marks a significant milestone in Nussbaum Medien’s digitalisation strategy. “For us, the NUSSBAUM platform is the logical answer to our corporate objective of providing all information about the region and being the link between citizens, local authorities and other stakeholders,” says Kollak. Initial user feedback shows a high level of engagement and willingness to adapt to the new platform on the part of readers.
In the future, the company aims to connect as many users as possible in terms of content and geography, and to continually expand the platform with new content. This will include club offers, fundraising projects, vouchers, destinations, products and other content, as well as features from the Nussbaum world.
In the near future, AI will also be integrated to categorise, automate and keyword content to make it more relevant to readers. Connections for B2B advertising marketing or push notifications for local authorities are also planned. Accessibility will also be enhanced with read-aloud features and plain-language articles.
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