What’s stopping you from taking the leap and implementing a new personalization software that will meet and exceed your goals? Some organizations mistakenly believe that personalization is often difficult to implement and always takes too long. As South Africa’s IOL news platform discovered, this isn’t true for personalization with Froomle. 

We can hear directly from Lance Kuttner, Team Lead for the Development of the IOL news website, about his experience implementing Froomle’s personalization modules:

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Personalization before Froomle

Lance Kuttner: “Before we started working with Froomle, we had a third-party provider doing our personalization. At the time, our bounce rate and CTR were about average for the news industry, but we had been expecting better results from our personalization strategy so we decided to see what other options were available. 

Our goal was to find a way to successfully improve our bounce rate and CTR by improving engagement and website experience and increasing page views and session lengths. Plus, we wanted to be able to automate more processes for a smoother browsing experience for our readers.”

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Behind the scenes: documentation and dashboards

“My overall impression of implementing the Froomle modules was that it was smooth and quick, supported by a knowledgeable, dynamic, and young team.” 

Before the project really started, the Froomle team sent links to our documentation and integration pages, so they had the opportunity to go through everything and prepare a list of queries based on their specific situation and requirements, so they could get the most out of the kick-off meeting. 

“The documentation was well-structured, straightforward, and complete. Exactly what we needed during the implementation. In particular, I found the integration handbook to be extremely helpful and referred back to it frequently during the implementation.”

Froomle also gave them access to an all-in project dashboard, which contained all minutes from meetings, results of AB testing, and more. 

“Having all this information in one place was a lot easier than searching through emails. Lastly, during the implementation we used Slack to get quick answers to our technical questions from Froomle” said Lance.

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The implementation process

The project started with a kick-off meeting where we introduced the Froomle team, walked them through the process, answered IOL’s queries, and listened to their requirements and concerns. As IOL had already received the documentation, they could get straight down to the things that concerned them. They initially decided to implement a “More for you” module on the article page.

Lance added to this section the following: “As Froomle described it to us, the process has clear goals and timelines, including a two-week implementation process that fits well with our two-week sprints. When it came to implementing the personalization module, the timing closely followed the planning, enabling us to go live on schedule. In other words, it was exactly what we had hoped for.”

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Results

“We implemented the Froomle module in our ‘More for you’ section on the article page. From there on, Froomle carried out a couple of A/B and A/B/C tests and made sure we had access to real-time dashboards to closely monitor the impact of the different recommendations. The initial results were extremely promising, and definitely exceeded our expectations when it comes to bounce rates, CTR, length of site visits, page views, and more. As well as recommending our main news stories, the Froomle module also increased visibility of our smaller categories. I look forward to seeing how the Froomle results evolve and improve over time.” - Lance commented. 

In only 40 days, Froomle achieved a CTR of more than 12% on the article page, while increasing the session length by 400% for users interacting with a Froomle recommendation. More than 850 different articles were recommended every day, truly empowering IOL’s quality journalism on their website.

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Working with Froomle

“I’ve really enjoyed working with Froomle. They’re energetic, committed, and knowledgeable about their solution and the industry. It’s good to work with a team that’s ready to jump in and find the answers to our specific situation.”

Your quick and easy Froomle implementation

Are you interested in finding out how quickly and easily Froomle could be implemented on your news platform? Contact us for more details.

Take a look at Froomle’s “More for” you personalization in action at IOL article’s page.