FF News
Learn how Vipe Studio did custom WordPress enterprise website development for the global fintech media FF News.
Who are FF News
Services Provided + Elements Incorporated Into the Website
- Custom Design
- Custom Functionalities
- Direct Play Video
- Search Journey That Can Be Personalised by the Visitor
- Magazine Archive
- Events Archive
- Custom Multisearch
- Custom Dark Mode
A Media Website in Need of Rebranding and Performance Optimization
FF News approached Vipe Studio with a significant problem that was holding them back: they were dealing with VERY slow database queries. This major inconvenience was the result of the legacy pre-made themes they were using.
The FF News team found themselves stuck having to look for types of functionality that were either an addition to existing plugins, or something built in-house but based on the architecture of the slow themes they were using. Inevitably, this whole conundrum started to show its impact on the FF News website.
What FF News had was a lot of code from different places that was all trying to talk to each other and work together just to render the home page. Because of that, the loading times were often very slow and laboured, resulting in a user experience that was far from ideal.
Another major issue that the FF News website was dealing with was poor search functionality. The site was lacking in terms of the ability to differentiate between different post types, which made the user experience with search really bad.
Since the website has numerous post types, such as magazines, videos, press releases, an industry directory of people and companies, events, etc, it was in desperate need of search functionality that returns useful information in a way that was easily digested. But what FF News had at this point was just everything all at once, which impacted the user experience on the site in a negative way.
A Media Website That Has Need for Speed
Apart from the underlying problems with their code base, the FF News team wanted to find a partner who could build a lightning-fast website.
A website like FF News needs super speedy database requests since they’re dealing with coming up to 150,000 visits p/m on WordPress.
150,000 Visits p/m on WordPress
This means that all of that data is being searched by 30-40 people at a time. So those database requests need to be rapid, and they need to return results quickly.
30 / 40 Visitors online at a time
From a technical point of view, FF News holds speed in the same vein that Google does, namely as a marker of good user experience. As a news site, FF News only has a couple of seconds (in fact, less than a second) to grab the interest of users. So all of their queries need to be fast, and the site has to load super quick.
FF News’ team wanted to make sure that there would be no LCP, no delay, and no real obstruction when the user views the content immediately. This can be especially challenging for a website like FF News because most of its content is video-based.
Having content that’s easily consumed and easily searched was hugely important to FF News because they work with a wide variety of companies in the same space. So their users need to be able to find the content they’re looking for very quickly. This makes both search functionality and video functionality hugely important.
A high-traffic and heavy-content website like FF News basically needs all of the functionality that makes search engines like Google happy.
FF News Finds the Partner They’re Looking For – One That Is Approachable and Skips the Tedious Bureaucracy
The FF News team was determined to find a WordPress agency that could build something that was not only fast, but also more easily digestible for the user when they visited the site. This is where Vipe Studio entered the picture.
Anton Grant – FF News’ Chief Technology Officer – was the main decision-maker in the process of finding such an agency. After doing thorough research, he came across Vipe Studio and, more specifically, Vipe Studio’s founder and CEO – Ivan Popov.
At the time of Anton’s research, Ivan was just preparing to fly to Porto where he was invited as a speaker at WordCamp Europe 2022. Anton found that fascinating. In his own words:
I thought: this guy (Ivan Popov) has got something to lose. And when somebody’s got something to lose, you know he’s going to do a good job because he’s got a reputation with WordPress and he’s a part of the WordPress community. And being respected within the industry is hugely important. I liked that Vipe Studio isn’t some faceless organisation. It is a company that is well-respected in the WordPress community.
For Anton, it was crucial to work with someone who is a thought leader in the industry, so he approached Vipe Studio.
At this point, he had also seen another one of our projects, namely our work on The Recursive website. Although this project of ours had nothing to do with his vision for the FF News website, he could clearly see everything that we put into it, and he became convinced that we were more than capable of producing what FF News needed.
Above everything else, though, Anton truly appreciated the straightforward communication he had with Vipe Studio:
I liked the more approachable nature of the conversations I had with Ivan (CEO of Vipe Studio) and Stefan (Clients Associate of Vipe Studio). I like the approachability of your company, and we’re very much the same in that regard – we’re not stuffy corporate organisations. The approachability, the lack of bureaucracy, and the straight-talking nature of your company were all major factors that made us choose you.
After deciding to work with us, FF News’ team found it very helpful to have those open lines of communication, which were informal and which felt like talking with peers, people who could understand their needs and effectively implement them.
For FF News, there was a level of trust factor based on the conversations they had with Vipe Studio’s team that left absolutely no doubt but to entrust us with their ambitious project.
Ivan Popov’s involvement in the WordPress community was a key factor in FF News’ decision to choose Vipe Studio.
Vipe Studio Steps in and Gets the Job Done
And so, when all the brainstorming and planning was done, the time came for us to actually showcase our expertise and prove to FF News that they made the right decision by trusting us.
Here’s what we did to take the site to a whole other level:
Custom Design
We created a design following FF News’ brand identity and the brief we had. We made unique UX and UI, which we coded on a WordPress theme that is super lightweight and super fast. We optimised the code to perfection following the best practices.
Custom Functionalities
In terms of functionalities, everything we included in the FF News website is there to serve one purpose – make the site super lightweight and fast without bogging it down with additional plugins.
Direct Play Video
We are well aware that news sites need to keep the attention of the user. And since FF News has a lot of video content we made sure to optimise that content to the fullest.
Now, when a visitor wants to watch a certain video while browsing archive pages with a lot of news, they can skip clicking on the particular news and just directly play the video while continuing to browse the archive page.
When we added this functionality, we knew that this type of direct-play video is known to have caused some problems for marketing teams in the past. The problem happens because if someone views the post while browsing an archive page, there is no indication that the visitor actually visited the site and watched the video. Why? Because in this scenario, the visitor doesn’t watch the video from its single page but rather from the archive page.
Vipe Studio’s experts managed to overcome this problem. Now, even when a visitor watches a video while browsing archive pages, this counts as a visit to the post page, thus allowing the marketing team to properly track the interest that a piece of particular news is generating among visitors.
Search Journey That Can Be Personalised by the Visitor
The FF News website has more than single post entries – it has various branches of content that are related to people, companies, magazines, and events. We made it easier for visitors to choose what they search for.
For instance, instead of searching for news, visitors can search for a specific person and see all publications written about that person. We made it so a visitor can also see a list of related colleagues of the person they’re searching for as well as the company that the same person is related to.
The same goes for the opposite search journey. Say a visitor wants to search by company. When they do that, they will also be able to see all posts that have been written about that company and see all the people associated with it.
This complex search functionality works with a lot of queries on the site, and we’ve made sure to make everything as fast as possible. The search is instant regardless of the many entries on the site.
Visitors can now filter their search thanks to the custom filters we’ve written. We didn’t use any plugins or anything ready-made so that all of this filtering can happen as quickly as possible for site visitors without ruining their experience.
Custom Multisearch
Because of the many different post types that are present on the FF News website, we developed a custom multisearch functionality. What this means is that a visitor needs to make just one global search interaction to see absolutely everything there is on the site on the subject.
Basically, how this works is that all of the different post types are related to one another. So if we search for a given term, the global search will check all types of content on the site and it will return all relevant results. This includes all news, videos, magazines, companies, events, and people that are related to the entered search term.
With just one search, a visitor can search through all types of content available on the site.
Custom Dark Mode
We know that a high-quality news site needs to provide a top-notch user experience. This is why we took care of people with sensitive eyes by equipping the FF News website with a custom dark mode.
The coolest part is that if a visitor switches the dark mode on, the website will remember their preference and the next time they visit it the dark mode will be automatically enabled. Again, everything is completely custom-coded to avoid any potential bogging down by third-party plugins.
A Project Where the Client Was Involved Every Step of the Way
At Vipe Studio, one of our main priorities is to ensure that the client is involved in the project from beginning to end. Our work on the FF News website is a great example of that.
Here’s what Anton Grant – FF News’ Chief Technology Officer – had to say about our collaborative approach:
I’m really pleased with the way the project turned out. I think we chose the right company for the job. I couldn’t be happier with the way things have progressed. It’s just good to be able to work with a company that not only can do the job technically but also have the appreciation that when they hand over the work, I’m going to get involved in the code and accept that they’re not responsible for my changes and be appreciative of that. A lot of companies would say: oh, no, if you make any changes, that’s a deal breaker. But you guys are so accommodating in the way you allowed me to get involved as well. So I always felt part of the project. I always felt like I wasn’t outside of the project. My work was as integral to the project as your work was, and that made a big difference for me from start to finish. I would 100% recommend working with Vipe.
A Launch at a Challenging Time That Didn’t Cost Any Loss in Traffic
One interesting thing about our work on the FF News website is that the revamped site was launched at a rather challenging time during a Google core algorithm update. Scary, we know.
What happened was that the FF News team was absolutely prepared to lose some traffic – they expected to lose between 20-30% in the worst-case scenario since most news sites have been reporting a 15 to 20% downturn at the time.
However, thanks to the meticulous attention to detail we put into every aspect of building the new site, FF News saw no decrease in traffic at all. What’s more, they even saw an increase on a couple of really important keywords for them.
Since we switched over at the end of September during the Google algorithm change, we’ve seen no decrease in traffic at all. And actually, given that it was at such a time, we can easily say that if we had done this and there had been no algorithm changes, we would have seen an increase. So that’s a great situation for us to be in because we’ve not lost anything. We’re in a really good position to build on what we have. Obviously, given the fact that the site is now faster, the information is easier to digest and can be found easier on the SERPs, we should now be able to springboard into higher search engine positions. And we’ve seen an increase on a couple of really key keywords for us. We’re now on the first page for two very high-volume keywords. We have ranked on the first page of SERPs for these keywords before, but we’ve been dropped a couple of times. And now we’re back on again. So that’s great.
FF News Today: Faster Than Ever, Optimised for Success, and Ready to Stay at the Top of the Game
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