Case study . Media & Entertainment
20 minutes delivers a better experience to all its readers with TwicPics
About 20 minutes
20 minutes, a publisher of free news for the general public, was launched in Paris in 2002.
Since 2006, it has continuously been the most widely read paper in France with 2.4 million readers per day. The media brand draws 20 million readers per month. In all, more than 80% of readers view 20 minutes on a digital device.
The challenge
Deliver an optimal experience to all users
The team at 20 minutes has always strived to be at the forefront of technology and innovation. They are also very sensitive to how fast their website pages display because readers click away if the pages do not load fast enough.
In fact, it was reader feedback that made 20 minutes realize that the diversity of connection quality across France led to wildly different load times. Readers in regions with lower-quality coverage (3G, for example) perceived the site to be slower, unlike readers in major urban areas.
While images are a valuable asset in user engagement strategy, if they are poorly optimized, they have a detrimental effect on website performance. That is all the more true for internet users who suffer from the effects of the digital divide.
With 50 photos on the 20 minutes home page, the consequences on performance were considerable in areas with poor network coverage.
Having already optimized their servers and network, the team at 20 minutes tackled the performance of the website to offer a quality experience to all readers.
To address these challenges, 20 minutes turned to TwicPics for visual media optimization.
The TwicPics solution
Transparent integration
After a meeting between Winoc Coppens, Director of Information Systems at 20 minutes, and the TwicPics team at the Web Summit in Lisbon in 2018, the goal became clear: resolve the impact of images on page load times with an easy-to-deploy SaaS solution.
After integrating OptimiCDN in the interface and concluding a successful test phase, 20 minutes was won over by the solution's agility. TwicPics supplemented their network expertise while improving web performance without diminishing the optimizations already in place.
The integration of TwicPics in the 20 minutes infrastructure was transparent, simple and agnostic. According to 20 minutes, no matter the upgrade — a new photo system, storage solution migration or IS update - TwicPics always fits easily into the image workflow.
The results
Happy readers
Shifting the task of image optimization to TwicPics frees up time for us, which we can then invest in developing services for our readers.
Since deploying TwicPics to the 20 minutes website, the average image file size has been reduced by a factor of five to six, along with bandwidth.
Thanks to efforts to optimize the display and incorporate advertising content, pages now load faster, especially over 3G connections. Readers no longer encounter any deterioration of visual quality and are satisfied with the experience. 20 minutes also prepared for the arrival of Google's Core Web Vitals and the optimizations needed to score well on these new metrics are already deemed to be "a done deal through TwicPics".
TwicPics also helps address CSR (corporate social responsibility) matters: by reducing image file sizes and bandwidth, 20 minutes is shrinking its carbon footprint.
According to Aurélien, CTO at 20 minutes, entrusting TwicPics with image optimization ultimately created more time for his teams, so they can now invest in developing new services for readers.
