Two iconic brands come together

Fired Earth approached us with the exciting news that they were soon to launch a collaboration with M&S. Naturally we were keen to ensure the site was in top shape ahead of such a major event, so we undertook a few exercises to assess readiness. The start point was to engage with the hosting provider and check the server provision was suitable for the expected increase in traffic. The other key thing needed was the ability to easily promote the reveal and surrounding content.

Having used the Adobe Commerce Page Builder on other aspects of their site, it was only sensible to look at extending the same system for creating content on the homepage.

Historically an Magento 2 install would have a number of different files coming from different areas of the system to produce the front page. These different files would be set up by a developer and in most cases the store owner would have no access or understanding of these files. Any content creator’s hands would be tied should a site need updating. A best case scenario would often see some facilities for a client to update content but the different sections would be hidden in unrelated areas of the CMS. Widgets hidden in blocks, copy assigned to content blocks, hero slides hidden in a module and the list goes on.

The homepage Page Builder set-up for Fired Earth puts full control of the output into the hands of the content creator. All elements created by Absolute that may be needed to form part of the page are available to drag and drop onto the homepage Page Builder canvas via Commerce’s intuitive GUI.

Fired Earth now boast a front page that is produced and managed in-house with little support required from Absolute. If a promotion is intended to run for the following week, one of the team can drop into the CMS and update the hero image and message. If a selection of products is needed on the front end to support said promo this can be easily added by dragging the product component onto the canvas and selecting which items to display. The adding of a product carousel is an example of a task that would traditionally take a conversation between client and agency and some back and forth before the product selection would finally be available on the home page.

With the new Page Builder an important chunk of the complexity of M2 is simplified and put into the hands of content creators. With a little training from Absolute, Fired Earth are now free to instantly update their homepage to reflect what promotions and messages they chose to display to their customer base.