These news stories had our Community talking in 2022

In 2022, the seven members on Digitec Galaxus’ communications team in Switzerland, Germany and Austria wrote almost 100 stories about the world of e-commerce for all to hear – from data pieces to interviews with team leaders to profile stories on employees from other departments.

One of the target audiences for these stories is our Community. In other words, our customers. The last twelve months have seen almost 3.4 million customers shop with us at least once.

Our Community keeps on growing and is very active. This is because many of our customers do more than just shop at Galaxus and Digitec. They also rate their purchases and exchange information about buggies, graphics card, vacuum cleaners, etc. Our Community members are also very involved when it comes to clicking, reading and writing. They like and comment on the content we produce on a daily basis and usually don’t hold back when it comes to being critical.

Here’s how our data stories, background reports and people profiles went down with the Community this year.

The most likes

The most likes went to the article «New on Digitec and Galaxus: snail mail on demand» written by my colleague Alex Hämmerli.

What was it about in a nutshell? Since August, customers have been able to opt for a slow delivery of their order, whenever things aren’t time critical. By doing so, customers can help take the pressure off our employees in logistics. The new feature went down really well with the Community and was awarded 817 thumbs up.

The biggest flop

When it came to cross-generational shopping behaviour at Digitec Galaxus, the Community was only marginally interested. Alex’s article «Silver surfers? As if! Online shopping is booming among the young» generated a mere 11 likes and 0 comments. My colleagues David Kübler and Seraina Cadonau even went the extra mile for the article by conducting a street survey on the topic. But the Community still wasn’t impressed.

The most deleted comments

This one was a no-brainer for me to answer. The article «Being transgender at work» I published in June caused a massive uproar. It also included some hate comments I deleted.

Deleting comments is the last resort. After all, we want to be a space where critical comments and negative feedback are also welcome. Why? Because we often gain valuable insights from them. But in this case, we were dealing with calls for violence against a minority.

This was my personal low point in terms of community management this year.

The biggest Community annoyance

There were some articles published on galaxus.ch and digitec.ch that caused heated discussions among members. «Country divided over returns: French-speaking Swiss not amusés by shipping costs» was one of them.

Let’s rewind. Back in February, I wrote an article about returns in online retail. Previously to the publication, we had asked market research institute GfK to carry out a survey on the matter. Based on the data they provided us with, I wrote the article.
Within the Community, the returns issue caused a bit of a stir. There were 253 comments. Many of them hailing from the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Some Community members disliked the fact that the article focused on differences, thereby further widening the Rösti divide between French- and German-speaking Switzerland.

Fair point. I took the criticism to heart and learned the following: maintaining a factual tone is very important when writing about emotionally charged topics.

The most popular profile story

The Community loved the story about Tim Tanner, who quit his job at the bank and started working for Digitec Galaxus. He was showered with 317 thumbs up and countless comments.

My former colleague Sharon Zucker – shout out to you! – nailed the taste of the Community with her article.

Top articles by language region

In French-speaking Switzerland, Ticino and German-speaking Switzerland, different articles proved to be the most popular in 2022.

In French-speaking Switzerland, the collaboration with Decathlon was met with the greatest interest – measured in terms of page views. In Italian-speaking Switzerland, the sex report generated the most reads.

And the article on snail mail was clicked on most by Community members in German-speaking Switzerland. Our English-speaking readers also had a clear favourite: energy was the hottest topic and was rewarded with the most clicks.

A big thank you to our in-house translation team for translating all this content into French, Italian and English!

The most popular pieces in Germany and Austria

Our communities in Germany and Austria keep on getting bigger. They also really enjoyed the article on snail mail.

In Germany, the article «Why 111th place brings joy rather than tears to us at Galaxus in Germany», penned by my German colleague Daniel Borchers, also proved to be very popular and generated many likes.

Which topics were you most interested in? What would you like to read more or less about next year? Thanks for letting us know in the comments!