High tech for Hygge: JAKALA connects 40 million users to hundreds of internal content providers with minimal loading time

How do you bring seven Danish wonders, 30 tourism authorities, 78 destinations, hundreds of content editors, 30,000 tourism products, 40 million users, and 10 million tourists together in one multisite portal solution? JAKALA (formerly FFW) took on the big challenge from VisitDenmark for 3.5 million monthly users around the globe. 

At a glance

VisitDenmark was founded in 1967 and is the  national tourism organization in Denmark, responsible for international marketing of the country as a travel destination, as well as national and international coordination and analysis work.  
 
They had 7 Danish wonders, 30 tourism authorities, 78 destinations, hundreds of content editors, 30,000 tourism products, 40 million users, and 10 million tourists – which all needed to be consolidated within one multisite portal solution with more than 80 associated sites. This needed to be designed and developed with a strong emphasis on excellent design, user-friendliness, and high performance. 

VisitDenmark approached us with the goal of connecting 40 million users to hundreds of internal content providers while also aiming to reduce loading times to a minimum, even when utilizing large images and videos to showcase Denmark's wonders.  

The portal needed to cater to a wide range of target audiences, both internally and externally. And consequently, the project becomes particularly impressive when you consider its scale. 

When travel bloggers, city marketers, cultural professionals, museum operators, gastronomers, hotel operators, and many more collaborate on content for the same web solution, it quickly results in a substantial volume of content - along with the need for effective management. Furthermore, all content had to be translated into 15 languages for a global audience. Additionally, when 3.5 million monthly users from around the world engage with this content, the requirements for this type of tourism portal becomes abundantly clear. 

The integration of vast amounts of data presented an exciting challenge for our developers. We aimed to ensure that all backend work on the website would seamlessly translate into an intuitive user experience on the frontend.  

Technologies such as feeds from third-party providers for event listings, partner directories, weather forecasts, and widgets for hotel bookings, among others, were integrated into the background. 

We adhered to the Scandinavian tradition that technology should serve a practical purpose, and this philosophy is evident here: the ultimate goal of all our efforts was to deliver a flawless user experience for all target audiences, on all devices, across all subpages, utilizing all third-party solutions, and in all 10 languages. Recognizing that the previous version of the VisitDenmark platform could no longer meet the increased demands for performance, security, and user experience, it became clear that a modern multi-site solution was essential to meet these growing requirements. 

The creative process commenced with the development of a visual concept, followed by a comprehensive concept for the entire website solution, and finally, a detailed design. The development of both the information architecture and design occurred in close collaboration with VisitDenmark's project team through a series of 5-day design sprints, each culminating in wireframes and design elements that underwent internal and external testing.  

This structured approach allowed us and VisitDenmark to focus on both the finer details and the overall user experience simultaneously, with us handling the planning and facilitation of these design sprints. 
 
The redesign of VisitDenmark's new website is significantly more contemporary and visually appealing, featuring stunning imagery and captivating videos showcasing Denmark's treasures. In addition, the site has been enhanced for user-friendliness and greatly improved in terms of speed, facilitating smoother navigation for visitors. The VisitDenmark solution is constructed using Drupal 8 and has transitioned to Drupal 9 CMS with a decoupled React frontend – an implementation that has garnered praise from the global Drupal community. Our team successfully resolved numerous issues with the React implementation, including preview integration that allows editors to preview the React-based page in both mobile and desktop views, resulting in improved performance and an optimised SEO setup.  

The VisitDenmark platform is delivered at lightning-fast speeds worldwide through a content delivery network. Internal scalability is achieved, in part, through the CMS architecture, which rigorously separates data storage and processing (a decoupled CMS). This means that the workload for maintaining the portal can be distributed across many individuals globally. 

 The new multi-site tourism portal solution brings VisitDenmark's online presence into the 2020s with an exceptionally fast, contemporary, and future-proof editorial platform. The new websites load significantly faster than those on the previous portal, providing editors with greater flexibility in creating and managing content. Additionally, the portal is now more secure and easier to update thanks to the new release model introduced in Drupal 8/9.