Siv Kristansen, Front Editor at Dagens Perspektiv
- We saw increase in visitors on all sites
Read about Medier og Ledelse's experience in migration process, tool adoption and the results of the migration to Labrador CMS
Medier og Ledelse is a Norwegian media house publishing 5 different newspapers. We talked to their Front Editor, Siv Kristiansen. She is in charge of the layout, both on web and print and has witnessed a couple of CMS changes.
- We have quite a few sites in Labrador - says Kristiansen at the beginning.
Medier og Ledelse went for a standard Labrador setup. That means that their current tool setup is CMS Publisher for print, Mailmojo for newsletters and Google Analytics for data insights. She mentions that these are all well integrated with Labrador CMS which brings them good results.
Kristiansen commented on their migration experience, comparing it to their earlier migration and upgrade to Drupal 10.
-When we imported all the stories or rather you did it went really well. We had several meetups just to check all the old stories. It went really well, it was a big job to go through but everything went well. We have actually switched to the latest version of Drupal only two years before moving to Labrador CMS and that was a big cost. Drupal is a powerful tool but not that easy to use. When we looked at Labrador we could see that it is easy to use compared to others.
-It's just easier to get in and to use it and it's much easier to edit the front page. I think that's the main difference. Most journalists think it was really hard to edit the front pages before.
-Significant increase of the traffic
-We saw increase in visitors on all sites when we converted to Labrador.
Siv Kristiansen, Front Editor at Medier og Ledelse
Since she had little to say about the migration period, we talked about the post migration period. She shares about one of the most important improvements for Medier og Ledelse.
-We saw increase in visitors on all sites when we converted to Labrador. I am not sure how is that possible. With our previous CMS we had some technical issues with the sitemap and such and the traffic did not go through.
Most of Labrador CMS customers experience a significant increase in traffic, and the answer to how this is possible is double fold. The results come both because of all the technical off-page SEO improvements, sitemaps, schema markups, clean url, and because of the other SEO features that Labrador offers.
-CMS we can stay with for years
Medier og Ledelse Front Editor reveals all the factors behind the decision to change the system.
Kristiansen told us about her typical journalist research process that enabled her to discover Labrador CMS.
-I like to look for what others have, visit other pages and check what CMS they have. I often look in the source code and check out what others are using and just to make sure I know what they're adding as well.
When talking about other important things to consider when switching CMS, here's what she highlights is crucial.
-The price was a big part, we knew what the cost would be and the work amount was really well laid out for us as in you need to do this and this is what we will do and this is the cost. That wasn't the case the last time we switched from a old version on Drupal to the new one. It was just blowing up all budgets. That was the main reason to go with Labrador CMS. Then there was also success stories from other customers because this time we're going to land on a CMS that we can stay on for years, and not make another switch in two years. That was also a really important part of the decision.
-Much easier to edit the front page
Medier og Ledelse has been running on Labrador CMS for a year now. Talking about the adoption process and the user experience Kristiansen outlines the ease of use, intuitive interface and the WYSIWYG editor. Being a Front Editor herself, she definitely appreciated the seamless editing process. She says:
The interface is really easy, you just know where to click. It is really easy compared to others.
Siv Kristiansen, Front Editor at Medier og Ledelse
- It's just easier to get in and to use and it's much easier to edit the front page. In Drupal most journalists think it was really hard to edit the front page. You had to think more like a developer.
Siv Kristansen, Front Editor at Dagens Perspektiv
In the end, Kristiansen mentions a couple of other features that make her life as a Front Editor easier, aside from front page editing.
-You have a button link, that wasn't in there when we first migrated. And when I have things I want to embed, I can use the embed.
She mentions they tested one of Labrador CMS' AI features, the article translation feature, making the translations available in 141 languages.
-I have tried the translate feature, we have articles about places to visit in Norway and I thought maybe this is stuff that Germans want because they usually come in summer. And we have a German journalist here and he said the language is really good.
