Access to the really exclusive content

The remit was to create a premium content section for the publisher Gruner + Jahr, designated for paid content. The new product STERN PLUS offers users the best of the magazine STERN – available digitally, anytime and anywhere, with daily news, exclusive stories and insightful reports.

Content that can be both read and listened to, completely free of advertising. Then there’s also STERN CRIME PLUS, the new online offering created by the crime novel publisher – narrated in multimedia formats and already accessible wherever you happen to be.

This multi-tenant paid content solution marked a major step for Gruner + Jahr, with the involvement of cross-departmental project teams. Gruner + Jahr benefited in particular from Factorial’s extensive experience in responsive web development.

As an integral part of the development team, the consultants at Factorial made a valuable contribution with regard to responsiveness and user experience.

Working with Factorial, Gruner + Jahr Digital Media has created a premium content area that is optimised for all output devices and can be used again and again as a frontend layer. The focus here was on the frontend development of a white-label solution for presenting web content that connected existing content interfaces, the in-house authorisation layer and the tracking infrastructure for measuring success rates all at the same time.

As an MVP (Minimum Viable Product), the brands Stern+ and Crime+ were launched through this technical foundation in order to gather experience for the roll-out of other G+J Group publication titles, and to incorporate any insights gained into the optimisation process.

Another special feature of the new premium content area was the integration of DPV (Deutscher Presse Vertrieb) and an associated paid subscription model, which is used for authenticating and managing user data, as well as facilitating the subscription itself.

Factorial provided support in this project as part of the team implementing the new design layer with a payment barrier. It serves as a highly efficient infrastructure for clients that helps to considerably reduce the development time for other titles at the publishing group.