Netural & the power of simplicity
Storyblok is the first headless CMS that works for developers & marketers alike.
Whereas in the past, web development meant the creation and management of multi-country and multilingual websites; Today web development encompasses the management of a wide variety of different platforms, services and technologies (both web and native mobile or native in third-party systems). Needless to say, these solutions have to be developed with the greatest level of user experience, performance and up-to-dateness of the systems. Additionally, these systems that are used nowadays are very dynamic.
Austrian-based digitalization service specialist Netural counts among the longest-standing web development players in the German speaking market, with the company approaching their magical 25-year mark next year.
Netural provides their customers with a comprehensive service portfolio from digital consulting, like developing digital strategies, roadmaps and concepts, to operative services like project management, UX/UI design, front, back end and mobile development and continuous support. Netural develops and implements innovative, complex platforms, sales-supporting apps and tools, e-business solutions and new territory projects.
Their customer base ranges from adidas, BMW, Cineplexx, Doka, Keba, Raiffeisen Landesbanken, Silhouette, Swarovski, voestalpine, Egger, W&H, zooplus and many others.
Introducing Netural
Netural combines outstanding user experience with best-in-class implementation and a state-of-the-art tech stack - supported by lots of entrepreneurial and industry know-how. That is why their goals for their client projects are always - first - uncompromising user centricity which leads to the development of clear, appealing, intuitive user interfaces even for the greatest digital complexity - and - second - creating real “assets” for our customers, which develops their business further and positions themselves as digital innovators in their markets.
Netural’s agile organization is key for both - their identity and for their success. The prerequisite for Netural’s strong culture is a working environment that supports their teams in the best possible way, together with structures that keep adapting to new circumstances - intuitively and automatically. Excellent performance can only happen in a transparent and fair working environment where they transact at eye level and enjoy making great things happen as a team.
They strongly believe in the power of simplicity. Netural puts the user at the center of everything they do and designs solutions according to their philosophy: Seeing the digital beauty and not feeling its complexity.
We have always been one hundred percent convinced that both our developers and especially our customers benefit from Storyblok. Ease of use for users - even in the most complex organizations - and the highest possible flexibility and functionality at the development and customer level are main advantages of Storyblok. This confidence has been confirmed every time in all our projects with Storyblok over the past year.
Unique History
Netural has a very unique history when it comes to Storyblok. They were actually Storyblok’s first Partner, and with Silhouette - introduced the first customer to Storyblok.
Moreover, the industry recognizes the advantages of the headless approach to decouple data from the respective application. This enables companies to build a sustainable service architecture and massively accelerates the process from prototype to fully integrated services.
All these developments are reasons for the exclusive use of Storyblok as headless CMS at Netural.
Storyblok has solved a lot of issues for us. On the one hand the free choice of technology in frontend technology, on the other hand the maintenance-free cloud-based approach of the headless system. In most cases, a major update of the CMS system was not possible without massive adjustments of the services developed. Central advantages for us are always “time to market” and “in time, in budget and in quality”. Almost all of our projects with Storyblok meet these requirements. This is absolutely not comparable and achievable with alternative systems.
Incorporating Roomle with Storyblok
Roomle, a company aiming to revolutionize the furniture industry, approached Netural with some requirements to build a new platform. They were looking for:
- clean looking, modern website
- multi language (German, English)
- integration of Roomle’s 3D Viewer
- SEO optimized
- easy for editors to understand and use
- easy for editors to generate new landing pages
- flexible components
With the new stack, Roomle was able to create new landing pages easily and quickly. Not only was the development of the new website component-based, but so was the design. That is why it’s so convenient for editors to combine components with each other, without getting confused by or “lost” in the CMS backend and without “losing” the frontend design or “look & feel”. Thanks to the great language and country management provided by Storyblok, the customer was able to translate the whole website in the shortest possible time.
)
Storyblok has established itself rather quickly within our teams as an easy-to-use tool for our projects, which enables maximum flexibility and rapid onboarding for new employees in our growing company.
Because Storyblok is a headless CMS, developers are not limited in a particular way when implementing third party services. That’s why the challenge of the implementation of AR/VR was a matter of how good Roomle’s documentation of the integration was. Of course it was extraordinarily well documented and it was a breeze.
Silhouette
Silhouette approached Netural with the desire of creating a platform to communicate two key aspects: Their exceptionally lightweight glasses paired with meaningful stories and people behind the products. Therefore, Netural had to tame complex product data and enrich the experience of exploring products with exceptional UX.
Furthermore, progressive enhancement was part of the brief as well. In order to avoid a release with a “big bang”, the plan was and still is today to increment and adjust silhouette.com to the customers’ needs as well as roll out an e-commerce and Click & Collect experience country-by-country.
Due to the technological independence and the component-based approach, our internal processes in the projects are much leaner and more efficient, which of course benefits our customers and partners.
In the fast progressing tech-world we live in, Netural wanted to create a sustainable product instead of a fragile website, which has to be relaunched every 2 years. With the vast amount of frameworks at their disposal, they settled on Symfony + Vue.js + uikit. Why?
Symfony has been living and breathing on the pulse of time for many years and promises to perform so in the future. Vue.js allows them to enhance UX after Symfony did the “heavy lifting job” on the server and SEO side. A low entry barrier and high extensibility pleases their engineers at every experience level - from junior to senior. Uikit prevented them from reinventing the wheel all over and crafted a consistent design system.
Guess where Symfony fetches the content from, already for 4 years and counting? As one of the first major Storyblok projects launched in production, silhouette.com gets deployed on a daily basis.
Partner of the Month
With Netural’s storied history with Storyblok, as well as the great strides they’ve taken to bring their Storyblok projects to the next level are why we are happy to announce that they are the February Storyblok Partner of the Month! Feel free to check out their case studies for Roomle & Silhouette. If you’d like to get in touch, please visit their website or reach out by mail.
