Knack is Flanders’ biggest current affairs magazine. It remains one of the most widely read magazines in its class, but like any magazine, it needs to adapt to the digitalisation of media.
The client asked us to develop a cloud-based website for a fast and high-quality discount code platform Pixili was expected to deliver a website with top-notch design that fits within the Knack and Le Vif brands, as well as Cloud-based techniques that provide the necessary performance, security and scalability of the level of Belgium’s best websites.
The Challenge
Our level of expertise and experience is high. Of all our projects, there is no better example than this one. Roularta, the publisher of Knack and Le Vif, has more than a thousand employees, including its own team of software developers.
Yet they chose us for the technical and visual side, and Expert Group for their +10 years of experience running the most popular discount code sites in Belgium. This is not our first project with discount codes. We have years of experience developing similar sites such as TagCity;
A unique project of which we developed three versions in six years. Both our experience and tools within this niche market are quite rare, and Roularta recognized that.
We aimed for a simple, elegant design with a focus on graphic design elements that fit within the Knack brand.
But we also gave this website our own visual twists. For example, the set of icons on the website is specifically designed by us. Additionally, we have hidden a Pixipop, which is our own character-based art project, somewhere on the site.
faq
One user element I want to highlight is the frequently asked questions. We tackled that in a cool way by visualising it as a dialogue.
By the way, we talk much more extensively about the design process of user elements for this type of site in cases of TagCity and Kortingscode, you can also read more there if you find this interesting.
Faster than a click
The website is also highly advanced in terms of technology. With a minimum Google Lighthouse score of 90 for each page and a perfect score of 100 for most, along with an average load time of 300 milliseconds. Makes a page swich feel instantaneous.
Funfact the average time it takes a user to register a mouse click is typically 200 to 300 milliseconds. So, the speed at which this website changes pages on a standard web connection is equal to that.
And the page is loaded the moment, or even slightly earlier than your body can register the sensation of you clicking the mouse.
The search function also works at warp speed and provides instant results.
The video below is therefore not sped up, and shows the real speed of the search function
Built for success
A successful website is a double-edged sword. Knack’s sister site, TagCity, success almost became a plague. How success can become a problem is very technical, so we will explain it with an example.
You can compare how most websites work with a room. Usually a small room, there is room for 10-20 visitors at a time. Upon success, the room suddenly attracts not 10, but 100, 200 or even 1,000 visitors at a time. 1,000 visitors won’t fit in a room of 10, so you don’t have to be a scientist to know that that will cause problems and the room will have to be completely closed.
To take this back to a website, closing often means total inaccessibility.
The alternative is to rent a larger room. However, the need for a larger and larger room can be so expensive that traffic takes a bigger and bigger bite out of the website’s profits. To the point where the site is no longer profitable, even though it is very successful. This is often called website scalability.
And our approach is extremely scalable. How the website functions is not like a room but more like a giant field; there is room for 10 as well as 1,000 visitors at a time. The field is not a building and is therefore much cheaper to run but there is less luxury. Yet like the better festival, we have found many ways to make that field feel like a room.
How is this possible?
We know we make big claims, but we have a website that runs at top speed, huge visitor numbers and low hosting costs.
There is no catch; it is the result of years of experience, a custom designed system and the use of the latest cloud-based technologies.
