Magento–Pimcore Integration for Efficient Content Management
Client
The Client is a large multibusiness corporation engaged in omnichannel retailing and running a number of hotels, restaurants, a sports facility and an online magazine. The company and ScienceSoft have started a large-scale project of cross-business integration. The project part described below focuses on the ecommerce component represented by an online store and a hotel’s website, both developed on Magento.
Challenge
To bring products to the market in the most efficient way, the Client needed media rich website pages with detailed product descriptions, high-quality photos and a pinch of creativity. To pull that off, the Client wanted to delegate the content management to marketers to ensure outstanding visual presentation of the websites. Taking into account that the two businesses – the online store and the hotel – differ in product offerings and objectives, marketers needed a convenient and flexible editing tool to create website content promptly.
Solution
The underlying technology the Client used for their businesses was Magento Commerce, therefore we started out by examining the compliance of its native editing tool with the requirements. The key features inconvenient for non-techies were identified:
- Creating and editing pages require HTML and CSS expertise.
- There is no convenient drag and drop page builder.
With a range of useful default features and vast customization capabilities, Magento fully meets ecommerce needs of the Client. To complement it with a handy page editor, we offered to implement a Content Management System (CMS). Our Pimcore consultants stated flexible data modeling as a decisive argument in favor of Pimcore as an ideal tool to manage product data.
With the approval of the Client, ScienceSoft’s Magento integration team combined the power of the two systems. In Pimcore, ScienceSoft came up with editables (structural units) relevant for the Client’s business to allow their marketing team to manage content easily. Marketers build pages by adding necessary editables and filling them with content (text, images, links).
An intuitive Pimcore interface features key elements to create rich and visually appealing website content:
Documents. These are current website pages. Marketers can easily add new or edit the existing ones using editables. The convenient preview option allows experimenting with the look and feel of pages and presenting the final solution to customers. The default possibility to set a publishing schedule is particularly important for such promotional elements as time-sensitive banners.
Assets. Marketers store downloaded files – pictures, product photos, PDFs – here.
Data objects. This section features product lists. Marketers don’t need to add products manually both in Magento and Pimcore. With the two systems integrated, products created in Magento get automatically transferred to Pimcore data objects. A convenient search engine allows users to find and pick up objects (e.g. products or categories) in seconds.
Managing two ecommerce websites from the same Pimcore backend required addressing the security issue. ScienceSoft engaged role-based access to define the permissions to website editing.
Results
Having their Magento-based websites integrated with Pimcore, the Client doesn’t need to employ extra staff with programming skills to manage the content. With an intuitive editing tool at their disposal, marketers rely solely on their sense of beauty and corporate style while composing the website pages.
Technologies and Tools
Magento Commerce 2.2, Pimcore 5.1.3, PHP
