Netural & the power of simplicity

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.

Section titled Introducing Netural 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.

Section titled Unique History 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.

Section titled Incorporating Roomle with Storyblok 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.

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.

Section titled Silhouette 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.

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.

Section titled Partner of the Month 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.