On the journey with baby and parent – A web app tailored to your life

The operational field of Kaksplus is undergoing a transformation

Kaksplus, owned by Otavamedia, is Finland’s leading digital parenting media. As a pioneer in developing digital services, Kaksplus offers its readers current and reliable information related to parenthood.

The target audience of Kaksplus, young adults, no longer reads print magazines. For this reason, in 2019, Otavamedia transitioned Kaksplus entirely to an online format, possibly making it one of the first magazine publications in Finland to do so.

Another challenge is even broader: with the decline in birth rates, the number of families with children in Finland is decreasing, which also reduces Kaksplus’ readership.

The competitive landscape has also changed: today, magazines compete with social media influencers for both attention and advertising revenue.

How can Kaksplus stand out, provide value to readers, and ensure business continuity at the same time?

A personalized service as the solution

In the digital world, the flood of information can be overwhelming, especially during significant life changes. The early stages of parenthood are filled with questions and learning, making it difficult to find the right information.

To address this challenge, Kaksplus created the Plussalaiset service as a web application, offering personalized content and benefits for parents and expectant parents according to the child’s age and the stages of parenthood.

The goal was to build a platform for the community that provides up-to-date special offers and events and encourages direct engagement, not just through social media. Having its own platform would also allow Kaksplus to sell targeted advertising more effectively and collect high-quality first-party data about users.

Annina Pennonen, the editor-in-chief of Kaksplus, felt that choosing a partner for the project was an easy decision.

“We had a good experience with Hion during a previous website redesign. The collaboration worked well, so it was an easy choice to continue with Hion

Web application implementation brought cost-effectiveness

We started the project with a workshop to define Kaksplus’s needs and target groups.

“The planning and research regarding the target group’s needs and media usage habits had already been done in advance. This made it easy to start the basic service design process and plan the service’s manifestation,” Annina summarizes.

During the definition phase, it was known that 90% of users would access the service via mobile devices. Therefore, the service was implemented as a PWA (Progressive Web App), providing a native app-like user experience without the need to download a separate application.

Creating a PWA was a great achievement, and we are grateful for it. We had looked into PWA a few years earlier, but at that time, it wasn’t as technically advanced and didn’t work on iOS. It’s fantastic that now we received expertise from Hioni to make this possible,” Annina says enthusiastically.

A PWA allows for the sending of push notifications, making it possible to reach and engage users more effectively. Like a native app, a web application can create an icon on the phone’s home screen for direct access to the service. Additionally, a PWA solution is cost-effective from both development and maintenance perspectives.

“For us, a PWA enables better user engagement. We can communicate directly with users about new content and benefits. Compared to a native app, the maintenance is not separate, and ongoing development is cost-effective,” Annina adds.

If you want to learn more about developing PWA applications, check out additional information here.

Personalization using a third-party solution

For years, Otavamedia’s brands have featured selected digital content available only behind paywalls or logins. Kaksplus takes this a step further, as users provide their child’s date of birth or due date during registration and receive personalized content based on that information.

Seamless collaboration with professional expertise

According to Annina, the collaboration with the Hion’s  team went smoothly. “I have worked on projects with many different partners over the years. I appreciated that Hion has truly skilled experts. They quickly understood my requests.”

Annina praises the approach taken by Hion’s experts.

The project also involved other parties who contributed to moving the project forward collaboratively. “Whenever there are multiple contributors in a project, challenges can arise. However, we managed to integrate everything effectively, and the solutions worked seamlessly together.”

The design process also ran smoothly. “Designers often have strong opinions, so sometimes, as a client, I’ve had to be firm about what I want. Hion’s designer knew how to listen to our needs, which were based on prior research. The collaboration was really easy and smooth, even on the design side.”

The development of the Plussalaiset service continues together with the Otavamedia team, and we are constantly looking for new ways to deepen the user experience.

Technical details of the service

• Plussalaiset was implemented as a custom WordPress plugin for the Kaksplus site.
• The implementation principle was to build a new presentation layer on top of the existing site, expanding its functionality.
• The plugin included integrations with Otavamedia’s CRM system and Neuvo’s content audience classification system.
• In the PWA implementation, a customization was made so that notifications are sent to users when new articles are published, provided the user belongs to the target audience for that article.