The verdict is out: Toumoro and Ibexa deliver a successful health information site

Since the 50 years that it was founded, the Canadian magazine Protégez-Vous has become a reference for consumer product tests, surveys, and information. With nearly 100,000 subscribers, it is the 8^th largest magazine in French-speaking Canada.

In 2023, Protégez-Vous launched a new publication, Verdict santé. Printed four times a year, Verdict santé wants to become the benchmark for consumer information on health, food, and well-being in Quebec. Its latest issue features an investigation into marketing pitfalls, talks about migraines but also training at home. 

The digital version of Verdict santé went live before the first print publication hit the stands; it was developed by the Quebecois agency and Ibexa Silver Partner Toumoro.

“We were commissioned to produce the digital version of Verdict santé,” says Benoit Dubuc, Director of Toumoro’s Montreal office. “The site was developed using the Ibexa DXP content management platform and relied heavily on its multisites capability.”

The first stage of the project was the design proposal. Toumoro worked closely with the Protégez-Vous marketing and digital development teams to create an attractive, user-friendly website. The search bar and log-in or subscribe menus are a clear echo of the Protegéz-Vous site, but the soothing color palette, and rounded borders of Verdict santé set it apart to create a mood of well-being and calm. The simple layout makes navigation easier, something that creates trust, and is very relevant for this site. 

The second stage of the project was to set up multiple sites. As Verdict santé is a separate publication with its own identity, it was crucial to create a digital presence that was clearly distinct from the main Protégez-Voussite while maintaining a degree of brand continuity. Protégez-Vous was built on eZ Platform, the forerunner of Ibexa DXP. 

“Setting up a multisite allowed us to maintain two distinct sites on the same platform, therefore sharing resources such as users, the database, shop mechanics, and the code base,” says Dubuc. 

The third step was to manage permissions across the two sites. Protégez-Vous and Verdict santé have a hard paywall for premium content, which requires a subscription if you want to read more or leave comments. “This had to be watertight,” says Dubuc. “We had to set up permissions in the Ibexa DXP backend to make sure that users could only access those parts of the two sites which they were entitled to access.”

The next phase of the project was to move some of the content from the Protégez-Vous site to Verdict santé to form an initial content base. “We worked closely with the content editors, who selected the most relevant articles to move to the new site and provide a good initial content base at launch” says Dubuc. “The articles were reorganized to fit the site’s new navigational structure. We reconfigured the search function with content segmented or shared across the two properties.”

Toumoro also adapted the subscription management module to allow for subscriptions to the new Verdict santé website, or to both Verdict santé and Protégez-Vous. Verdict santé currently offers a choice of digital-only, payable monthly or annually, or digital plus four print magazines a year. Users can also subscribe separately to a free newsletter with regular updates and tips. The Verdict santé newsletters needed to be branded and designed separately from those for Protégez-Vous. The communication with the transactional system had to be adjusted to allow for two different channels.

“Overall, we are pleased with the work we have done so far with Verdict santé,” says Dubuc. “We created an attractive and intuitive site and leveraged the strengths of Ibexa DXP to effectively manage the resources shared between the Verdict santé and Protégez-Vous websites.”

“The new site design and navigation are tailored to its target audience, and presents the popular content produced by the Protégez-Vous team in a new channel.”

To build on the success of the launch, Verdict santé has the ambition to use personalization to better serve its subscribers as well as attract new ones. Once sufficient data will be collected, a great first step will be to recommend articles that are relevant to the reader’s behavior and where at least one is reserved to members.

Protégez-Vous clings to its print heritage and is committed to providing a “real” magazine experience to all its subscribers in Quebec and beyond. “But there is no doubt that in terms of marketing and taking things to the next stage, digital has the most powerful tools, especially in the age of AI,” concludes Dubuc.