UKA receives a high-performing TYPO3 relaunch from visionbites

The Universitätsklinikum Augsburg (UKA) is the largest hospital in the Bavarian region of Swabia. It serves as a maximum-care medical center for its region and beyond and employs over 7,000 employees, specializing in patient care, research, and training. As a University hospital, it plays a key role in innovative medicine and interdisciplinary research for medical professionals.

The hospital has been running its website on a TYPO3-based backend since 2015, selecting visionbites to lead the project after a competitive selection process where the agency’s track record of technical expertise on TYPO3 projects, professionality, and flexibility were all key factors that played a role in it being chosen. Additionally, the project was developed in close collaboration with Augsburg-based agency YEAH!, who handled screen design, while visionbites was responsible for the implementation, technical architecture, UX, frontend development, hosting, updates, and training of editors. 

In 2023 UKA proceeded with a full-scale relaunch of its digital presence planned, designed and developed by visionbites.

UKA sought to relaunch a more scalable digital platform for their needs. Specifically, they required a robust multisite setup for specific landing pages that cater to the variety of services offered by the hospital, including child care and blood donations. Furthermore, due to the sheer number of pages hosted on the hospital’s TYPO3-instance, usability and user experience through the hospital's system architecture would be a key factor in assessing successful implementation.

Additional factors that would need to be considered were an improved screen design that effectively communicated brand values and portrayed the hospital as the state of the art health center it is. A multilingual setup with AI-powered translation features would also be required, as would accessibility upgrades, SEO capabilities, and GDPR-compliant tracking to gather data for future page optimizations.

The project began with conception and strategic workshops, along with UX/UI design, and comprehensive frontend and TYPO3 redevelopment. A flexible TYPO3 multisite setup was implemented, allowing independent microsites with layouts that differ from the main website, and feature their own dedicated designs that are ideally tailored to marketing campaigns.

DeepL was implemented for faster content translation to strengthen the multisite features, and Algolia search was implemented to the site for more effective website searches. Additionally, GDPR-compliant user tracking, and automated quality assurance through the ‘visionbites Continuity’ bot were also implemented, as was planACAD training management via API enabling automatic event imports, user registrations and the creation of news content.

The TYPO3 version used to power the backend also underwent a major upgrade, from v10.4 to 13.4 LTS, delivering a more powerful feature set for the hospital to utilize. Content editor training and SEO training were also delivered by the visionbites team to UKA staff.

“visionbites has supported us for over 10 years as a technical partner in all matters related to our website. Problems? There’s always a solution! Excellent end-to-end consulting — from needs analysis and concept development to strategy — combined with fast and reliable implementation are what define the agency and our collaboration.”

– Corporate Communications, UKA

Upon the project’s completion, UKA has a flexible, modern, and scalable content management solution with extensive multisite capabilities comprising several thousand pages that were structured in a user-friendly manner, enabling the hospital to deliver comprehensive information on individual clinics, specialized treatments, and guidance for visitors.

Optimized usability with cutting-edge breadcrumbs and the powerful Algolia search engine, and the new information architecture provide clear orientation even deep within the website structure. The DeepL-powered translation supports bulk translation of entire page trees, delivering unmatched efficiency.

In terms of clear impact, the SEO optimizations have led to a doubling of website visibility on search engines over the last five years.

UKA and visionbites will continue to collaborate, with the agency providing ongoing support, hosting and further development of the existing multisite setup. Current projects also include the creation of a dedicated newsroom as a central hub for news, press releases and updates, making content distribution easier than ever.

Looking ahead to the future, visionbites will also be tasked with building an intranet for employees, where they can learn about benefits, news, and important internal information.

The collaboration between visionbites and UKA brought about a powerful, modern, and fully capable TYPO3 instance with robust multisite capabilities, an array of new features, and a real impact that makes editor work more efficient than ever before, serves patients, and delivers high-performing digital solutions.

TYPO3’s capabilities in supporting such complex projects are a testament to its wide-ranging feature set and its consistent evolution as a digital platform built to support major organizations with diverse needs.