Bibelwerk: Content commerce for an unusual business model

bibelwerk.de is the launch portal for two separate organisations that share a name and a mission but operate separately in terms of organizational structure: The Catholic Church's publishing house for Bibles in the German-speaking world (the Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk GmbH) and the non-profit association Katholisches Bibelwerk e.V.. Since these previously individual websites were to be unified and the Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk GmbH had to adapt its shop to the conditions of the DSGVO, b13 developed a customized, content-based sales solution.

GDPR prompts a relaunch

When the clients turned to b13, they were working with an outdated content management system and needed to transfer their websites to a more stable CMS. In addition, Verlag Katholische Bibelwerk GmbH had to secure and encrypt their customer data to meet the requirements of the GDPR. And even though the organizations were to continue working independently, the relaunch provided the opportunity to standardize workflows and designs and to establish bibelwerk.de as a common landing page.

A customised retail solution with TYPO3

As a publishing house, Verlag Katholische Bibelwerk GmbH works like a normal print publisher: a new book programme is published twice a year and these books are distributed to both trade customers and end customers via two logistics partners. The end-customer business is usually done by telephone order or via the webshop bibelwerk.shop.

The new GDPR-compliant shop, built with TYPO3

Because TYPO3 is so easy to customize and expand, we decided on a customized retail concept in TYPO3. This enabled us to implement the shop of Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk GmbH quickly and in a structured way.

— Florian Keitgen, project manager at b13

Since payments are usually made by invoice, the shop did not need a complex solution for payments and inventory overview. In the project's initial phase, b13 developed a new shop in which customers could view detailed pages of products, add them to their shopping cart and complete their purchase by registering on the website. The password encryption included in TYPO3 fulfills the requirements of the GDPR.

Detailed product pages via integration

Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk GmbH uses NTX and ONIX publishing software to record all information about an individual book or product - including:

Stock
Product name
Product description
Image(s)
ISBN
Subscription and/or publication price
Publication date

b13 has integrated an interface to the publishing systems so that this information can be exchanged with the TYPO3 shop. This gives each product its own page with detailed editorial content, an image carousel, custom-fillable text fields and other ways to highlight special features.

"We can specify how often the page updates," says Keitgen. “When the publisher adds a new product or information to their system, those changes are reflected on the website.”

Bringing together the interests of two partners who are close in terms of content

Before the relaunch on TYPO3, the publisher's or shop's site and the association's site were operated separately. Even though the organisations still want to work independently from each other, there was a desire to unite the sites in one installation in order to harmonise content, continue to use product information and make the graphics more uniform.

Bibelwerk e.V.’s needs for Sunday Reading explanations were a good fit for TYPO3 CMS

The non-profit organisation (Bibelwerk e.V.) publishes information material on Catholic scriptures, including the Sunday sermon texts and matching interpretation aids. These pages include PDF documents, large images, and text or media to explain details related to the Catholic Bible - all of these things. Were implemented with the customisable content elements in TYPO3.

b13 unified the UI for the association, publishing house and shop websites and gave each area a slightly distinct design, with each of the organisations assigned its own colour. As the association, publisher and shop are now all in the same installation, product information from the shop can also be used on the other pages.

Clients benefit from new updates

b13's customised solution has ensured a uniform web presence for the publisher and the association, implemented the shop in a GDPR-compliant manner and created a flexible installation in the process that can continue to be used in the future. Since the relaunch, visits to the websites have increased significantly - for example, with over 40,000 page visitors to the Bibelwerk e.V. site per month.

As a next step, the shop of the publishing house Katholisches Bibelwerk GmbH has started to allow purchases for guest users without an account and password. For this project, b13 added a payment solution so that guest users can pay for their purchases in advance and do not have to wait for the invoice. This also minimised the risk of unpaid invoices for the shop owner.

We are very happy with our new website. Every time we sit down with b13, they manage to translate our ideas into individual, well thought-out technical solutions.

— Julia Lössl, Managing Director of Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk GmbH

The work goes on

In the coming months, b13 will update the bibelwerk.de installation’s TYPO3 version and website extensions to version 11. We’ll also add new payment gateways, like Apple Pay, creating new opportunities for the client to sell products.

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