Founded in Switzerland in 1997, Magnolia is a CMS used to build composable digital experiences. Magnolia helps create fully integrated customer experiences and speeds up digital delivery of content. Magnolia boasts 480 enterprise customers, thousands of Community Edition deployments, and more than 200 certified Magnolia Partners around the world. They further state that their enterprise customers include Sanofi, Generali, the Atlassian, The New York Times, Harley Davidson, and Union…
Magnolia is a very capable DXP, that provides client with lots of flexibility in composing its own stack. While the core of the platform is a content management system, the open architecture of Magnolia DXP allows it to connect to any platform, allowing client to extend the capabilities. One scenario would be a centralized content hub - where through a single platform, content authors can choose which channel to distribute what content. For example, long form content for consumers viewing on a laptop, short form content for those using a mobile browser. This allow the client to personalized the experience based on channels. Another scenarios would be leveraging on GenAI - using Magnolia's built-in connector to ChatGPT. If that is not the service that one desire, you can always connect to another AI service such as Google Gemini. With GenAI, connected, content author can use AI as co-pilot to help them scale up their content production.
Landing pages. Say, a webinar optin page. Or a lead magnet optin page. People can be persuaded to believe that others like the lead magnet and don't want to be left behind and also they can trust others opinions. So, having a widget on these pages that shows, "XYZ just signed up" can help with getting more sign ups. A widget that shows the amount of people that are looking at a certain page is also beneficial. The best thing to do, is to test at all times. See if the conversion rate is increased or if it drops. And test variations of the widget one at a time. Sometimes, it helps, but in some cases, one can see little difference. So the key is to test. We used it on a front page and we optimized it for speed. We saw that we had several things that slowed our site down. So we decided to take away some of the items. This included our widget from Provely. It does not take a lot of resources, but we were super savvy and wanted the optimal speed. We might revert back into adding it again, but for now, we stripped the page for all extra baggage so we were certain that we had the correct overview on the speed that was needed. The widgets can be less appropriate also, if one wants full attention to the copy on a page. This is also a savvy choice. So the key is to TEST, again... To determine if it helps or halts conversions. This example we are seeing on direct response sales pages in the make money online nice. They rarely use this. Some do. So again, testing will determine the effect. (A savvy user tests, but even those, skip it some times, so it is best to use your own due diligence)
Speed of development - time to delivery from zero to MVP was excellent
Ease of use - the authoring experience is very easy to build and train
PAAS/SAAS - the managed service platform removed the traditional overhead of running in-house technologies, meaning we could focus on value add, with less time spent keeping the lights on.
The documentation provides samples that are often out of context, and difficult to know where the provided example code should be implemented. More tutorials providing the full project or step-by-step instructions on how to implement subject material would help greatly. Baeldung is a resource I would consider the gold standard in how this is done in other spaces.
The use of JCR and Nodes makes object serialization/deserialization painful. Jackson compatibility or similar would be a welcome enhancement to the developer experience. Maybe leveraging code-gen from light modules to build model classes when possible could help accomplish this.
Modifying the home layout from light modules is frustrating. It seems that any configuration overrides made merge with the default rather than overwriting, which makes for a difficult combination of guess-and-check while referencing the documentation to see what should be in each row/column when making changes.
Including "mark all as read" or "delete all" in the notifications app would be a great quality of life improvement. It seems that by default, users have to individually select messages and operate them.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We see the professional look it gives, and the live proof it provides. It helps with conversions, so we want to be sure we have the optimized numbers for our business. It is worth keeping so we earn more leads, and sales by piggybacking on the psychological effect of FOMO and more. We believe it is a must have in our arsenal, at least on selected pages.
We've shown it to a number of users both clients and our own team and despite initial apprehensions, they "get it" very quickly. It's intuitive and friendly and quick to perform daily tasks. We once had a client tell us "Using Magnolia makes me smile" which says it all for us.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
I gave [it] 7/10 only because of the loading time of pages. Otherwise, I think it deserves an 8. Normally this is not an issue per [se] but considering the rating matrix and as I have been asked to honestly write about it. Yes, the page loading times could be improved.
You always get an answer based on your SLA. But you always get a solution. That's the successfactor in this case. To often i was frustrated about people in a company without even a clue what there product is about or how to solve a problem. Magnolia's Support Team does a very good job and try to help you in most of the cases
We had a question... We asked about a certain feature... One that was not present. So, what happened is that they responded quickly, but also, they developed the feature FOR US, which is unprecedented in many ways. It is not the norm, so we were taken great care of. The support was more than helpful and we would recommend them any day of the week.
The only thing to note, if you're afraid of tech, get the developer to install the code. You can do the design, but maybe get someone to install the code, again, it is done in minutes. Maybe 5. The other thing to note, keep an eye on your stats and analytics. You install this for a reason, to help with conversions. The only way to know for sure if it is right for your page(s) is to track it. If it does not aid your % it is of no use. Not EVERY page will be a candidate at all times. BUT, most are. So my advice is to go for it, get it set up. Track your before and after. If you an uplift in your % then keep it. If there is no visible change, maybe you're not tracking the right metrics over the right amount of time, so check if you can track deeper. If you have tracked really well, and not seeing an uplift, maybe change the wording, the widget, or the placement of it. And keep tracking. If there is no change short-term or long-term, then I would reflect on the usage. It is made to uplift conversions and it does so. But it is your job to place it where it matters, like on a lead magnet page, where others can see that they are not alone in both wanting and/or taking action and physically signing up to a lead magnet. So, again, my advice, get it set up. You will most likely do the job right on the first go, and from there, enjoy, and keep tracking
I've used several CMSs like AEM and EpiServer, and comparatively, they all excel at different things. Magnolia is the best to develop for/against. Episerver has the best/most fluid UI in terms of content editing, and the overall admin experience AEM is just all around sucks.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We have tested 3 other products in the past, all failed to have the complete solution we were looking for. Provely is here to stay and has added lots of features. 1 of the other tools we tested are low on features. 1 of the tools we tested had a short run and updates stopped and the project was abandoned. 1 of them never worked properly.
Magnolia has brought about positive impacts. For instance, we need not outsource web design and marketing services because thanks to this software, we can handle most work inhouse
The software is affordable with no compromises on capabilities and therefore it is gives us value for money.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
