KALO
KALO provides metering, analysis, and billing services for the real estate and housing industry. Their offerings include infrastructure for consumption data collection, maintenance of ventilation systems, and integrated billing of heating and operating costs, aiming to help clients reduce expenses.
My focus within the project: translating client needs into the existing CMS, aligning on technical feasibility, and ensuring a scalable, maintainable setup that remains easy for the client to edit.
Services provided
UX Design, Development Briefing, Testing
Team
AHOII Networking
01
Website Relaunch
Background and Challenge
For the website relaunch, KALO provided designs created by an external design agency. Our responsibility was to implement these layouts faithfully within TYPO3 while ensuring long-term flexibility. The main challenge was reconstructing the visual concepts as reusable, modular content elements without compromising the original design intent. Since the provided layouts contained several highly specific modules, we needed to determine which elements could be generalized and which required tailored solutions. Balancing pixel-precision with practical maintainability was essential, especially given the scale of the site and the number of editors depending on a consistent and easy-to-use CMS.
Approach
The first step was a full evaluation of all provided layouts to identify recurring patterns, shared functionality, and opportunities for modularization. This allowed us to define a flexible system of TYPO3 elements that supported both the current design and future needs. Continuous communication with KALO ensured that decisions around simplification, alternatives, or deviations from the original designs were transparent and aligned with technical, budgetary, and editorial considerations.
Group comparable modules and identify shared features to form generalized, reusable components.
Create flexible elements that serve multiple use cases, reducing the number of one-off modules.
Prioritize necessity and long-term value of highly specific components.
Introduce temporary alternatives that can be optimized in later development phases.
Present options and counterproposals to balance design fidelity, cost, and maintainability.
Through systematic analysis and transparent collaboration, we built a modular element system that remained true to the original design while ensuring long-term maintainability. Editors now benefit from a streamlined TYPO3 backend with elements that are intuitive, scalable, and efficient to manage. By introducing thoughtful alternatives and phased improvements, the relaunch created a solid foundation that supports both current content needs and evolving project requirements.
02
Newsletter
Background and Challenge
KALO wanted to expand their contact forms with an optional newsletter signup. Although simple at first glance, the complexity lay in planning for future scalability: the newsletter system would gradually evolve into multiple topic-specific newsletters for different target audiences. Therefore, the solution needed to support flexible categorization without requiring development work for each new variation. Another key aspect was optimizing the workflow for the CMS administrators rather than website visitors. The goal was to empower admins to independently adjust and reuse contact forms for different scenarios, ensuring easy handling as new newsletter groups are introduced.
Approach
We began by researching suitable third-party tools that offered reliable newsletter management and seamless TYPO3 integration. Brevo was selected for its flexibility and the ability to assign users to different newsletter groups. To prepare for future expansion, we extended the contact form with a hidden field that stores a number corresponding to the desired newsletter group. This allows each instance of the form to override defaults and adapt to any communication need without structural changes.
Select Brevo as an adaptable, CMS-friendly newsletter provider.
Extend the generic form with a hidden group-ID field.
Allow editors to override default settings when placing the form on a page.
Ensure forms can be duplicated and reused for new use cases.
Enable step-by-step rollout of multiple newsletter categories.
The resulting system gives KALO full flexibility to grow their newsletter strategy without additional development overhead. CMS administrators can now adapt forms, assign newsletter groups, and configure variations independently. This scalable setup supports both the current generic newsletter and future expansions into multiple audience-specific formats, creating a sustainable and editor-friendly workflow.
