Butlin's + Magnolia
“It's been game-changing in terms of managing our content. Already we can see the returns; the bounce rate has gone down 5%, and the conversion to search, which is a big metric for us that we track, has gone up 8%, and the biggie is that conversions have gone up by about 12%, and that is just by content rather than the booking engine.”
Founded in 1936 by Billy Butlin, Butlin's is a well-known group of holiday resorts in the United Kingdom. The company’s aim is to provide affordable and enjoyable holidays for British families (the Butlin’s family brand) and groups of adults (Butlin’s Big Weekenders) - making the UK short break accessible to all. During its long-term digital transformation journey, Butlin’s decided to upgrade its tech stack to a modern Digital Experience Platform (DXP) to increase the speed of digital experience delivery and achieve economies of scale.
The challenge
Butlin’s had been using an outdated content management system (CMS) that required extensive customisation to modernise the customer experience. However, managing content became cumbersome, making it difficult and slow for editors to make changes. The customer experience also suffered from slow page speed and lacked personalisation and optimisation capabilities.
This was when Butlin’s recognised the need to overhaul its digital presence through a complete transformation of its technology stack. The Butlin’s team’s objectives were clear: a new website that content authors could manage without constant support from developers, a modernised booking journey, and overall enhancements to the customer experience.
The solution
A DXP that meets Butlin’s marketing needs
While embarking on their digital transformation journey, Butlin’s sought the expertise of One Beyond. Together, they chose Magnolia as the Digital Experience Platform to support their digital aspirations with a very detailed proposition. Magnolia offered a host of capabilities that aligned perfectly with Butlin’s real marketing needs:
- Ease of use for marketers: Its user-friendly, unified authoring interface made Magnolia the ideal solution for non-technical content authors who need a seamless editorial experience for their day-to-day work.
- Content delivery: With Magnolia, Butlin’s teams can create content once and publish it everywhere, making the Magnolia DXP the single source of truth for all omnichannel content in the future.
- Collaboration between developers and content authors: Content authors can work in Magnolia’s authoring interface without having to consider how content is delivered to the front end, and Butlin’s developers can write front end code independent of how content is managed. This separation enables marketing to manage digital experiences without having to rely on IT and significantly simplifies the collaboration between developers and content authors.
Improving the experience of front end developers
Developers, too, have praised the platform's ease of use in building front end components. The team appreciated that they did not have to learn a proprietary programming language, but were able to work in their front end framework of choice without being limited by the content management solution in the back end.
Leveraging their existing programming skills and Magnolia’s repeatable building blocks, they were able to develop at real speed and achieve economies of scale.
The result
Magnolia has been a real game-changer for Butlins’ complex digital experiences, including its holiday booking process. By streamlining its digital experience delivery, Butlin’s teams are able to move faster, leading to the company seeing a return on investment in its first year working with Magnolia.
Butlin’s has witnessed significant improvements by streamlining how content is managed: within months, the bounce rate decreased by 5%, and the conversion to search saw an impressive 8% increase. Most notably, overall conversion increased by 12%. Having seen these results early, the team is expecting an even larger return on investment from updating its booking journey.
Butlin’s successful partnership with Magnolia DXP exemplifies the power of choosing the right digital experience platform to achieve business goals and exceed customer expectations. With a modern and flexible DXP, Butlin’s is now perfectly equipped to create great digital experiences that resonate with its audience and drive real outcomes.
Key metrics
Bounce rate
Conversion to search
Conversion
