Magnolia CMS
Tourist Portal Ticino.ch Joins the Social Web
Ticinoinfo sa is the company responsible for managing Ticino.ch, the official reference site for tourism information in and around the Ticino region in Switzerland. It works closely with local tourism boards and associations to promote Ticino Tourism. In order to better accomplish its goals, ticinoinfo decided to upgrade its existing Web site to support new features such as personalization and social networking feeds. Their long-time technological partner, Tinext SA, implemented the new site using Magnolia CMS.
- Zoom
- Tourist Portal Ticino.ch
Ticinoinfo sa was founded in 1997 with the aim of collecting and distributing tourism-related information about Ticino, the southernmost canton in Switzerland. It functions as a data bank and reference for Ticino's tourism industry and tourism operators, and its information is directly used by 11 local tourist boards and many local restaurant and hotelier associations.
Visitors to Ticino.ch can obtain information on Ticino accommodation (hotels, holiday houses and camp sites); restaurants; local wines and cellars; events, theatres and concerts; museums; public transport and government; and promotional offers. It is widely regarded as the best source of information about Ticino, and together with its sister sites, Ticino Tourism and Lake Maggiore Tourism, it receives more than 3000 unique visitors and more than 16000 page views per day.
Promotional Video by Ticino.ch
Statistics
| Client | ticinoinfo sa |
| URL | |
| Implemented by Magnolia Partner | Tinext SA |
| Infrastructure |
|
| Number of Sites | 4 |
| Number of Pages | 15,000+ |
| Number of Authors | 15+ |
| Page Views per Day | 16,000 |
| Unique Visitors per Day | 2,700 |
| Daily Traffic | 500,000+ hits per day |
The Business Problem: Reinventing Ticino.ch
Ticinoinfo had a comprehensive database of accommodation, gastronomy and events for the Ticino region. This information was being distributed on a regular basis to partners, such as local tourist boards, hotel associations and tourism operators. However, the organization had realized that simply distributing data in standard form was no longer enough, partners also wanted the ability to modify, or augment, the data with specific information to satisfy their own marketing needs. The current site did not permit such data modification, and a key business goal of the redevelopment project was to remove this constraint for partners.
Creating an Appealing User Interface
The previous version of the site had an unappealing and overcrowded user interface. There were many different types of information on the home page, targeted to different visitor categories, with the result that users were often confused about how to navigate through the available content. Ticinoinfo hoped to address this problem with a more user-friendly and appealing interface that complied with current Web standards and offered clear navigation and categorization of content.
Integrating with Facebook, Twitter, Flickr & Co.
It was also clear to ticinoinfo that the site needed an urgent upgrade to become relevant to users of the "social web". Today, more and more users are logging on to Facebook, Twitter and other social networks to find, share and post information, comments and feedback. To be a relevant player and add value for both users and partners, it was important for ticinoinfo to be able to integrate these social feeds with its own content. This feature was absent from the existing version of the site, and was considered a second, critical goal of the implementation project.
Supporting Mobile Phones and Tablets
Keeping in mind the increased use of smart-phones, mobile phones, tablet PCs and other devices to access online data, a third goal for ticinoinfo was to optimize content for multiple distribution channels, thereby ensuring that its data was accessible and available to all users without restriction. At the same time, it was important to maintain a common content platform, to avoid work duplication and to bring about efficiency in the content authoring and editing process.
Handling Content in Multiple Languages
An additional requirement was that the selected platform support content in multiple languages, as users would be from different countries and would therefore require content to be viewable in English, Italian, German and French. The existing Ticino.ch Web portal already supported these languages, and it was important that this support should continue in the new implementation.
The old site was definitely unappealing both for visitors and authors. Visitors had difficulties in finding information. Authors, on the other hand, had little prospect of personalizing web pages. Magnolia not only changed the way of conceiving the web, but also started a mentality shift within the company: from attention to technicalities and data collection, to a more customer-centric and marketing orientation.
Davide Guzzetti, Project Manager, Tinext SA
The Solution: Magnolia CMS and the Magnolia STK
To help address these business goals, ticinoinfo turned to Tinext, their technology partner since 1997. Established in 1993, Tinext provides market-leading information management tools and software to help businesses achieve their strategic goals. Tinext offers its customers enterprise-grade solutions for Web content management (WCM), enterprise search, e-commerce and email marketing.
After a detailed evaluation, Tinext realized that ticinoinfo's requirements would be best met by a scalable, open source enterprise-grade CMS that also provided an open API for custom development. With more than 15 years of experience in the field of Web Content Management (WCM), Tinext has zero hesitation in recommending Magnolia CMS for this project.
Selection Criteria
The key reasons for choosing Magnolia CMS over competing alternatives were:
- The simple and user-friendly editing interface, which reduced the learning curve for content authors
- The modular architecture, which enabled easy integration of custom business logic and third-party applications
- The Standard Templating Kit (STK), which made it easy to quickly create an appealing and engaging user interface
- The built-in support for Web standards, accessibility, multi-language content and multi-site administration.
Site Design and Implementation
After selection and approval of the CMS, Tinext's development team went to work. The Magnolia STK made it easy for them to design a new interface for the portal, to make it more attractive for users and partners. Developers also created a set of custom paragraphs and templates to allow partners to easily augment existing information in the ticinoinfo database and create their own custom content. Finally, Magnolia's support for custom business logic was useful in integrating third-party social network feeds with the existing site content.
Magnolia has been chosen by Tinext for all its web projects requiring a CMS. This is because it is easy to extend and personalize. Moreover, it is extremely easy to integrate external systems and databases. This was crucial in this specific project and Magnolia fitted perfectly our needs for external database integration, access to Web services and social networks, redundancy and platform scalability.
Maurizio Müller, R&D Manager, Tinext SA
The Result: A More Social, Personal Ticino.ch
Ticino.ch now has a brand-new user interface, with a home page that is dynamically populated with different content depending on the user’s current geographical location and language selection. The new Ticino.ch web-site also contains an "editorial layer" that is managed by Magnolia CMS. Thanks to this layer, authors of different Web sites can add their own content to the existing ticinoinfo database. For example, while ticinoinfo continues to provide standard data about events in the Ticino region, such as event name, date and location, partners or event organizers can add further information such as photo and video galleries, documents, downloads, and related links.
Ticino.ch data can now also be augmented with social network feeds. For example, thanks to additional Magnolia customization performed by Tinext, Twitter feeds, Youtube videos and Flickr photo galleries can be easily integrated into ticinonfo’s content with just few clicks. No technical expertise is required to perform these tasks; authors need to specify only a few parameters, such as Flickr ID or Twitter username, and the required data feeds will be automatically fetched and embedded into the Web page. This allows event organizers to add a continuous stream of news about the event to an event listing, or hotel and restaurant owners to enhance their online profile with real customer reviews and feedback.
Business Benefits
Ticinoinfo sa is already seeing multiple benefits from this highly flexible and user-friendly system:
- Lower overall costs through centralized technology
- Faster time to market through simple interface for content creation
- Better communication with users through social networking tools
- Greater goodwill and higher levels of usage from partners
Magnolia CMS allows us to easily meet the specific customization needs of our clients. The integration of Social Network tools gives us the opportunity to merge structured and editorial content. The result speaks directly to actual and prospect tourists. It provides the information they need in a new multimedia, involving, and appealing experience.
Mattia Storni, Managing Director, ticinoinfo sa
Conclusion
The new Ticino.ch Web portal, built with Magnolia CMS, fully addresses the goals of data personalization, social media integration and multi-channel distribution. It provides local partners, including tourist boards, with an easy-to-use and powerful tool for managing their online communication and promotion. Equally important, the new system has also helped ticinoinfo gain greater goodwill from local tourist boards and hotel associations, who now have the autonomy to create customized promotions while leveraging ticinoinfo's excellent data base of resources and events.