Volvo Trucks online magazine is a success

Volvo Trucks needed an online version of its customer magazine

Volvo Trucks is one of the world's largest manufacturers of heavy trucks, with sales and support in more than 130 countries around the globe. The company has run a common European customer magazine project since 2004 that reaches out to truckers and trucking company owners. Today the magazine is published in 31 languages with readerships in 29 markets, and the concept is based on a combination of unique, local content and common content translated into the various languages.

Be online as well

"We decided to start the site because we wanted to increase the number of channels through which news in the Swedish magazine Volvo På Väg (Volvo Inside Lane) on the Road and its European sisters reaches its audience," says Susanne Frödin, European Manager for Volvo Trucks Customer Magazines. "We wanted readers to find us on the internet too, and give them something extra in the bargain, such as web TV. And we wanted to reach an 'internet generation' that is abandoning the printed media more and more in favor of online content." We also had a backlog of material from previous magazine editions that could now be made accessible and searchable.

One challenge is in handling the great number of language versions. Another is that the target audience is split in two; not only did Volvo Trucks want to reach truckers who still don't use the internet all that often, but also trucking company owners and executives with major trucking corporations - a much more computer-savvy group.

A flexible CMS platform which easily handles thousands of articles

A website with 31 different language versions was set up with the aid of EPiServer language management. It's easy to add new languages and administer the various editions. And because the site contains enormous amounts of data it is also important to have a tool that can handle thousands of articles flexibly. In order for every visitor to magazine.volvotrucks.com to find just what he or she is interested in, articles and videos are sorted according to subject area, which makes site searches a cinch.

"We launched right on time. We'd been working on the project internally for just under a year, together with our partner," says Susanne Frödin.
Visitor reactions after the launch were very positive. "We've had a whole lot of spontaneous feedback, and we're really happy and proud. The TV features in particular, where we film and make something extra out of news reports we've filed, are really popular."

Volvo Trucks has a busy, easily-administered website in 31 language versions

The overall result is a good-looking, practical and well put together website. In the initial phase it contains almost exclusively common material translated from the foreign language versions, but in the next phase Volvo Trucks will add local material to further improve opportunities for interaction with visitors.

"The online magazine has great penetration and we have many visitors to the respective magazine sites. My feeling is that we now have better direct contact with our readers; it's easier for them to send in tips about what they'd like to read about in future articles or to submit general feedback, for example. We've also reached new target audiences that probably haven't read our customer magazines up until now," says Susanne Frödin. "We're currently working on a newsletter linked to new articles being prepared, in order to increase traffic to the site."

"We're sitting on a gold mine of riveting news reports about trucks and trucking," says Susanne Frödin. "And thanks to EPiServer CMS we can reach out even further.