Voetbal International

Redesign of the Dutch’ leading (online) magazine about football

Voetbal International, VI for short, is the oldest magazine about football in the Netherlands. I joined VI in 2015. Back then, the digital platform was not ideal: the high traffic website was not responsive and its performance was not too high. Also, the content management system did not give editors much freedom. The developers struggled, because there was virtually no documentation and no good development environment. With a steep downward trend in (magazine) subscribers, VI also needed a new way to generate income.

Since then, a lot has changed for the better. Obviously, I’m not claiming full responsibility for that. As part of a devoted scrum team, we aimed to make VI a better plaform. For users, for editors, for developers. For everyone. Almost everything tied to VI.nl was rebuilt from scratch during an overall redesign project in 2016.

VI now has a fast, responsive, and scalable online platform, based on the CMS Magnolia, which is easy to maintain and extend. It gives a lot of freedom, allows for quick customization for sponsored content, and editors can send breaking news push notifications to users incredibly fast.

Match detail page
Match detail page

The launch of the new digital channels went hand in hand with the introduction of VI PRO, the new home for all payed content. VI lets users explore this content, by allowing registered users to read 5 premium articles for free per month, and by letting subscribers share content for free among their friends. Within five months after the release of the new and improved VI.nl, the amount of online subscribers had doubled.

VI PRO article
VI PRO article

In the early stages of this project, a (now former) colleague and I did the groundwork for user testing. We made a questionnaire for online use and thought of questions and actions we could address during interviews. Findings from these user tests layed the foundation for my wireframes. For the better part of the project, I created visual designs based on the Atomic Design that was setup during the redesign, and took ownership of VI’s online visual identity.

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