- > Customers
- > Customer Details
KHL Group
Established in 1989, KHL Group is the leading supplier of international construction information in the world. It is a diversified media company that delivers information in whatever format the market demands. Using its strong market-leading magazine brands, KHL has expanded into digital magazines, e-newsletters, directories, the internet, new media technologies, book publishing, direct mail, list rental, exhibitions, conferences and contract publishing.
Business Overview
- Company: KHL Group
- Industry: Publishing
- Domain: www.khl.com
- Content Management Solution: VYRE Unify
Established in 1989, KHL Group is the leading supplier of international construction information in the world. It is a diversified media company that delivers information in whatever format the market demands.
Using its strong market-leading magazine brands, KHL has expanded into digital magazines, e-newsletters, directories, the internet, new media technologies, book publishing, direct mail, list rental, exhibitions, conferences and contract publishing.
Objectives of the project and challenges faced
KHL's mission is to be first for global construction information; and the KHL website is an important factor in the drive to reach this goal. However, the publisher's previous website was not adequately supporting this objective and in 2007 the decision was made to seek a new web platform.
"VYRE Unify is helping KHL to monetize content by getting more content online efficiently and by ensuring we get the right content to the right person at the right time. Increasing the value of content is also helping to increase site visits, subscriptions and advertising." Peter Watkinson, Business Development Director
The key restrictions KHL faced included: static nature of the site; low volume of content published, with weekly news feeds covering just 20% of its output, as well as poor scalability and flexibility; which limited the publisher with respect to how it was able to distribute content. As a result, before the introduction of the VYRE Unify platform the vast majority of KHL content was only available in paper format.
KHL needed a solution where the relevant content could be displayed in a user-friendly and interactive manner, as well as the ability to distribute in multiple formats. Furthermore, the publisher also wanted to increase the relevance and quantity of content it distributed to both visitors and subscribers.
Therefore, a key objective was to drive more traffic to the site, increase registrations, and ultimately increase subscriptions and related revenue. An increase in subscriptions would in turn increase the publisher's online sponsorship opportunities and also positively affect advertising revenue.
In summary, the key objectives of the project were:
- To completely redesign the KHL site and refresh its look and feel
- To drive traffic to the site by increasing volumes of content and formats available as well as interaction
- Increase subscription revenue and advertising revenue
- Multi-channel publishing - users need to be able to take out online subscriptions to magazines and newsletters (either in print or digital format) and be able to purchase other market data in fixed HTML format / PDF format.
KHL did not want to employ more staff as a consequence of making more of its content available online, and therefore it was imperative that the solution introduced delivered process efficiency; so that the editors themselves could easily publish content with the new content management (CM) solution.
The Tender Process and the VYRE Solution
KHL set up an internal project team of three. These were drawn from its technical and editorial departments. The initial research involved looking at a wide range of CM solutions and then, with the help of an external consultant, a specifications document was drawn up.
"I'm a great admirer of the Unify system having worked with several CMS packages, I can say that Unify is the best combination of ease of use and flexibility I have encountered. Most CMS packages I have worked with would require the developers to get involved before building entirely new pages. But with VYRE, it is perfectly possible to build not just new pages to an existing template, but whole new page designs since the architecture is very open. Moreover, making small-scale changes to pages is well within the abilities of most users." Michael Upshall, KHL Consultant Project Manager
The company identified seven vendors that it asked to bid initially; at which stage more staff were pulled into the project including the company's CEO to ensure that all of the stakeholders' needs were met.
A shortlist of three technology providers was then drawn up. The specifications were refined and all three shortlisted providers were invited to give presentations. Based on these, the publisher chose VYRE and its award winning Unify platform.
As the KHL project was large scale it required tight budgetary control, challenging deadlines that will evolve over time, KHL wanted to be an active partner in the site development, enabling them to extend the solution in-house post launch.
"We have worked in partnership with the VYRE team to ensure adherence to tight deadlines, the creation of user-friendly interfaces and also autonomy, as we evolve and extend the Unify platform with our in-house development resources." Peter Watkinson, Business Development Director
All of these factors helped to confirm VYRE as the right partner for KHL with the decisive factor identified as VYRE Unify's flexibility and scalability. Ensuring that KHL had invested in a solution capable of supporting their growth strategy, as well as their current and future technical needs.
Furthermore, VYRE was able to demonstrate an impressive client portfolio, including many other blue chip companies, which instilled confidence and a high level of trust in the publisher.
KHL switched over to its new site in April / May 2008. And the publisher has just finished stage one of the project, which entailed driving traffic to the new site. It will commence with stage two of the project in the very near future.
The Benefits of VYRE
KHL.com now provides a comprehensive source of information devoted to the global construction industry. It includes extensive news coverage, archive material, in addition to equipment data, videos, financial information and analysis, site reports, and a series of reference sources.
"Increasing the range, interaction and rich media nature of content on the KHL.com site helps increase the value of content and the stickiness of the site. As a result there are impressive increases in the visits and also the number of pages viewed." Peter Watkinson, Business Development Director
In more detail readers now have access to:
- Five year archive of articles from all magazines
- Free access to all articles and images published in KHL's ten construction magazines
- Latest news and pictures from around the world
- Videos, audio, podcasts and presentations to enhance users‘ experience
- Free downloads of the thirteen industry-standard league tables
- Construction industry Business Centre
- All KHL equipment directories, both online and download, with information presented in a user-friendly way so that users can easily search and cross-reference data
Site traffic has increased and is still steadily increasing. In fact, after only 6 months, the site traffic has almost doubled and page views more than doubled, indicating an increase in content relevance.
Site Statistics: Pre and Post Launch
- Unique visitors:
Mar 08: 26,467
Oct 08: 45,196 - Visits:
Mar 08: 45,374
Oct 08: 75,959 - Page views:
Mar 08: 210,773
Oct 08: 443,776
With respect to search engine optimisation, KHL's page rankings have also improved significantly. Furthermore, the publisher has seen an increase in banner revenue. However, due to the current economic climate, it is somewhat difficult to make proper comparisons in this respect.
While it is still too early to establish return on investment (ROI) figures, the publisher is very confident that as content levels and revenue from subscriptions and advertising increases it will be able to demonstrate a good ROI.
Additional benefits include Unify's workflow feature, which allows the publisher to effectively manage and streamline the process of writing, editing, publishing and archiving content to the KHL site. For example content on the site over 3 months old is automatically archived.
Users are now able to comment on news items, enhancing visitors‘ experience and making use of Unify‘s social media features.
Finally, another big win for KHL is the bulk management of content and assets, as now instead of individual upload, digital assets and content can be uploaded, tagged and edited in bulk including: metadata, author, publishing date, genre, or sector. The bulk management features save KHL valuable time and resource and allow staff to be more productively assigned to tasks that support revenue creation.
Next steps - Future plans
KHL will soon commence working on the second stage of the KHL.com project. This will primarily entail identifying content to make available behind a registration wall. Once this content is available, KHL will be able to monitor and track the usage trends of registered users. This information will then enable KHL to add more and more high value content to the site.
By doing so, KHL will be able to ensure it offers the construction industry the content it needs and wants, and hence increase site traffic even further. Secondly by monitoring usage KHL can gain insight into what content can be made available as paid-for downloads in the future. Furthermore, the continual growth of quality data on the site attracts more visitors, which in turn has a positive impact on advertising revenue. In the future, once the value of content is firmly established, KHL would like to extend the registration model and offer paid subscriptions to premium content.
A future aim is that all subscriptions, digital or paper-based, as well as any paid-for downloads will be handled by the site's shop. This will be enabled by VYRE Unify, as the Unify system informs KHL of the nature of that subscription purchased through its e-commerce system. Unify's e-commerce system then interfaces with PayPal to handle payments. Once payment has been made, users will then be able to download content via the site.
Subscription and renewals will be easily and effectively managed through VYRE Unify's reporting facility. This will allow KHL to report on and manage: the type of subscription and content, payment dates, subscription start and end dates and any other subscription terms.
These subscription reports can then also be exported in various formats (Excel, PDF or XML) and fed into other systems. This, for example, will enable KHL to use this valuable information to target its marketing activities even more ensuring that users and subscribers are offered the right products and services at the right time.
Due to the different types of content, magazine titles, and newsletters the site will be designed to control access in a number of ways:
- Pages: some sections of the site are accessible only to certain subscriber groups
- Archived content: content that is not news and more than 3 months old is accessible only to subscribers
- Downloads: some files - particularly PDFs - are made available for purchase
