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Opening the Door to Broader Page Management Possibilities
At this year’s Livingdocs Summit, we presented some big news during our Keynote: that we are shifting towards a more standardised product. Indeed, we are offering a leaner approach: an individual configuration of standardised components with as little extra code as possible. This diverts from the previous direction where Livingdocs was a generic solution which required a customised implementation for each customer. We also highlighted our focus on supporting curation where it adds value and automation where routine work can be replaced. This approach allows us to expand the possibilities of our product more boldly and extensively in order to best meet the evolving needs of our customers.
So what functionalities are we focusing on when it comes to offering broader workflow support out of the box that can be individually configured to suit a customer's specific needs? Where will this shift be reflected? Let’s start with page management.
Why is page management so important? Because the page is more important than ever. Brand visibility and loyalty is critical to counter GenAI agents and search engines, and the news publisher homepage is *the* place where brand visibility and loyalty begins. Moreover, in the spirit of “destination first” – a concept explained at our Summit by Süddeutsche Zeitungs’ Hannes Vollmuth – a digital news homepage must be a place readers want to go, where they are enticed to stay. Therefore, pages must be managed intentionally with the aim of providing the most enriching, engaging material possible.
Spotlight on Süddeutsche Zeitung
Hannes Vollmuth, Senior Editor for Digital Strategy and Innovation at SZ, shares his Livingdocs page management experience.
Page management has long been a key offering in the Livingdocs product; it was even a key topic in last year’s Spotlight with Süddeutsche Zeitung. In alignment with our commitment to conscious growth, Livingdocs page management has now evolved over the course of many months of development into a complex interplay of features and capabilities which, for the first time, allows for many of the most prevalent use cases in one package. All of these functionalities come with de-duplication and require no customisation.
Let’s dive into the use cases where these functionalities can come to life:
Inherited lists and manual placement of individual articles
Inherited teaser lists shared across different yet connected brands can be given local emphasis in each individual portal with manual article placing. This can apply not only to localisation cases, but also to brand emphasis, where articles for only one specific brand can be pinned amongst a combination of lists for several brands. While this functionality pertains particularly to multi-brand organisations, there is potential for use within a single brand. This functionality not only promotes efficiency, but also allows for keener reader centricity.
High-quality hyper-curation with editable teasers
In order to accommodate SEO-enriched long-tail articles that deserve a spot on the homepage, users can look to editable teasers. Editors can change the title (and even the image) of an article teaser without changing the article itself -- or teaser placements of the article on other pages -- in any way. This allows such articles to be coherently incorporated to the theme and picture of a page, without affecting its SEO impact.
Enabling easier pre-publication page preparation with conditional components
To help eliminate stress on publication day while allowing for stories to develop, editors can prepare a page ahead of time with conditional components which go live only under designated parameters. So far, conditional components have been triggered by date and time; in the coming months, it will be possible to define conditions according to brand. These features enable greater flexibility and smoother publishing workflows.
Better workflows around A/B testing via Document Commands API
While A/B testing is not possible within Livingdocs, users can now take better advantage of external testing tools thanks to Document Commands API. Rather than having to manually adjust an article title to a winning headline determined by A/B testing, the original title is adjusted automatically by the external tool. Facilitating the testing of headline performance helps ensure your homepage is the desired destination for your readers.
Fixed-position promo articles in containers with dynamic teaser lists
In a blend of automation and curation, users can manually pin a chosen article to a position inside a container in which the remaining spaces are filled automatically by a teaser list. This accommodates strategic placement of articles and information – like the case of a sponsored article that must be in a particular position – differing subtly from the localisation case. This fixed positioning of a teaser can be executed even before said article is live.
Large-scale automation and optimised curation with metadata tagging
Livingdocs has long connected with external systems to handle metadata within Livingdocs articles. This capability is now accessible via page management: The text is sent to the external system which analyses the text, the tags are determined accordingly and end up in the metadata; the component then senses what is in the metadata and creates filters for conditions in article display in page management. Similar to topic page creation yet on a grander scale, this allows for optimised curation throughout the publication.
De-duplication: A not-so-deep dive
Having de-duplication within Livingdocs is key to ensure an article is displayed only once on a given page. In the case of inherited lists, if an editor decides to pin an article from that list as a key feature, it will be removed from the list, but only on that page. With de-duplication within Livingdocs, rather than on the front end, editors can better rest assured that they are able to make the most of the functionalities without having to worry about a duplication glitch.
Looking ahead
When it comes to page management, we’ve come a long way but the journey is not finished. Keep your eye out for developments in upcoming releases on how we are continually boosting the potential of page management, with features like brand components.
Livingdocs Summit Keynote 2024
Content creation is the foundation. Planning, media and agency are new additions. All in one system. Online-first throughout. Livingdocs.
As we move into the future, we want our product to provide the perfect blend of individualisation and standardisation so customers can leverage the best of Livingdocs to suit their specific needs seamlessly and right out of the box. Besides page management, this shift is being reflected in the ways our product can now be delivered – as an Azure-hosted Managed Service – as well as in the comprehensiveness of our solutions so we can offer more holistic workflow support – including planning system, asset management, page creation and print preparation. We want the functionalities within Livingdocs to leave nothing behind, so all you need is Livingdocs. Onwards and upwards!