Americaneagle.com and WordPress VIP Upgrade Mecum Auctions

A collaborative partnership leads to a successful site launch.

Digital transformations are monumental undertakings that test the mettle, talent, and determination of those involved. WordPress VIP Gold Featured Agency Partner,  Americaneagle.com, recently shared details about their successful work with Mecum Auctions in a testament to the power of partnership, innovation, and relentless dedication.

A high-octane collaboration

Mecum Auctions, the world’s leader for in-person car auctions, felt the limitations of their decade-old digital platform and knew it was time to shift gears. Mecum needed a solution that would not only cater to their current needs but would be resilient and scalable for the future. Americaneagle.com—a team of award-winning innovators specializing in digital experiences—was the best choice for guiding this transformation.

Operating at the intersection of deep strategic insight, intricate enterprise architectural design, and the transformative force of digital solutions, Americaneagle.com delivered “beyond expectations.” They managed to design, build, and deliver a custom platform tailored to Mecum’s robust requirements, all while keeping the project within scope, on time, and within budget.

A scalable, future-ready solution

With Americaneagle.com at the wheel, Mecum’s digital platform underwent a transformation that prioritized: 

• Automatic generation of car lot pages
• A reduced time-to-market for content
• Unparalleled end-user performance

At the heart of this transformation was a plan to harness the best tools and technologies available:

• WordPress VIP: Chosen for its robustness, flexibility, and capacity for unbeatable content creation, our platform and expertise played a pivotal role in delivering the backend infrastructure.
• Salesforce: Eliminated the need to build a separate inventory system.
• Algolia: Leveraged for world-class search capabilities.
• Cloudinary: Deployed as a dynamic asset management tool. Cloudinary is also a WordPress VIP Technology Partner.
• Vercel: Provided the frontend infrastructure.

At the core of all this technical innovation was the strategic decision to go headless, emphasizing speed, performance, and scalability.

Numbers that ignite

Mecum’s transformation isn’t just about the tools or the team, but the tangible results. The handling of 275,000 lots, 8 million+ assets, daily updates in the hundreds, and an annual view count of 120m stands as testimony to the robustness of the new platform.

Celebrating a grand launch

The successful transformation of Mecum Auctions showcases what partnerships can achieve—a celebration of technical brilliance, teamwork, and trust. 

WordPress VIP is elated to have been a part of this solution, and we tip our hats to the teams at Americaneagle.com and Mecum for making this vision a reality. 

Read Americaneagle.com’s full customer story

How Times Media Leverages WordPress for Inspirational Storytelling

Our customers explain how WordPress VIP set them up for success.

In the fast-paced world of media, embracing digital transformation is essential. Times Media, a prestigious publication group with a legacy spanning over two centuries, has harnessed the power of WordPress to revolutionize their storytelling capabilities. 

Harnessing the power of WordPress

Times Media needed a powerful content management system (CMS) to captivate audiences with inspirational content across diverse formats. 

Their digital evolution centers on their strategic adoption of WordPress, specifically through WordPress VIP, which has simplified their publishing workflow by 62%.

WordPress.org vs WordPress.com vs WordPress VIP: What’s the Difference?

Enhanced user experience

With WordPress VIP’s platform, Times Media editors now plan, publish and organize articles far more effectively, captivating and engaging audiences better than ever before.

The flexibility of WordPress enables Times Media to expand beyond traditional article formats, optimizing content for the web, apps, and even future platforms, all in the name of connecting users with the content they want. 

Versatile storytelling formats

Visual appeal is paramount in effective storytelling. Times Media’s emphasis on compelling imagery and engaging content creates an immersive experience for readers. 

WordPress VIP allowed them to create four different article templates and new types of storytelling, all compatible with platforms like Google Web Stories, Google Showcase, and Live News. With these templates at their disposal, editors can effortlessly craft stunning visual narratives that leave a lasting impact.

Data-driven workflows

Times Media relies on data and metadata to drive decision making within their organization. Here, WordPress VIP goes beyond an intuitive interface by seamlessly integrating with their planning and decision-making tool Desk-Net. 

They’ve also integrated their own Times Public API (TPA), used by Times Media websites, mobile apps, and other backend services to provide article and edition information.

For even more data, Times Media unlocked and improved meta tagging functionality within WordPress, with news story tagging options and flexibility to support commercial initiatives, including content search and discovery across their sites. This functionality auto-suggests tags during the publishing process and further simplifies time-to-publish for journalists.

By capturing critical information early in the content creation process, Times Media ensures that editors have the necessary data to make informed decisions on article commissioning. This collaborative approach enhances overall content quality and enables strategic content distribution across multiple platforms—all done in the user-friendly WordPress VIP interface.

That customizable and flexible UI has led to a 34% faster time-to-publish, thanks to 62% fewer clicks in the workflow.

Continuous improvement

Times Media’s  adoption of WordPress has transformed their approach to storytelling while refining their content creation process, digital presence, and data-driven approach to decision making. 

As Times Media evolves and innovates, they set a shining example of how WordPress empowers media organizations to engage audiences and shape the future of digital storytelling.

For more information about Times Media, read our full News UK case study.

Behind the Scenes of News UK’s Rampant Speed to Value

Launching a New Business with RS Components and Box UK

When RS Components was set on launching a new venture, they knew they needed a strong digital foundation.

At BigWP London, WordPress VIP customer RS Components shared a compelling story about creating an impactful tech business from scratch, using WordPress and WooCommerce to build a robust, scalable platform. 

Unleashing the power of WordPress and WooCommerce

RS Components knew they needed a strong digital platform to launch and support their new OKdo maker community, a place where people who love building and tinkering with tech could connect and share ideas. 

Traditional tech solutions weren’t going to cut it—they needed something powerful, flexible, and adaptable.

Enter WordPress and WooCommerce, a dynamic content management and ecommerce duo that would allow them to move swiftly, and accommodate rapid growth and change.

Creating a foundation for success

After selecting WordPress and WooCommerce, RS Components, partnered with Box UK to implement their vision, and also leveraged the vast WordPress ecosystem of plugins and expertise to create a truly custom solution for their business.

The OKdo platform was not just about front end beautification. The integration with NetSuite, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) provider, would help manage their complex supply chain and distribution across Europe and beyond.

Moving swiftly

In just eight months, RS Components launched a fully-responsive, multi-region, multi-currency platform featuring a full range of products, showcasing the power of WordPress and WooCommerce to start and grow a business. And it doesn’t end there.

From launching their single board computer Rock in 2022, to introducing customized hardware services in 2023, RS Components continues to evolve their business.

In 2023, they even used their platform to inspire the engineers of the future by giving away micro:bits for free to schools in the UK and US.

Built for the future

RS Components’ journey is testament to the transformative power and flexibility of WordPress and WooCommerce, a combination that helped launch a successful business in less than a year, and one that continues to adapt and evolve to meet the changing needs of their industry.

WordPress VIP is proud to be a part of that journey, offering guidance, code reviews, and other support.

Inspired to create your own venture using WordPress and WooCommerce? We can help, just reach out.

Read the full OKdo case study

PMC Makes the Switch to Gutenberg Block Editor

BigWP NYC presentation: How media giant Penske Media Corporation made the lives of their editorial staffs easier with a surer WordPress block editor.

Convincing hundreds of editors across dozens of websites to adopt a new, more efficient way to edit and publish breaking news, features, and blogs is headline news in itself.  

In 2018, Penske Media Corporation (PMC), parent company to a star-power media portfolio including Variety, Rolling Stone, Deadline Hollywood, and Billboard, decided the time was right to switch all their brands’ websites to a faster, cleaner WordPress editor—Gutenberg. It was a daring, multi-phased, two-and-a-half-year project that concluded in September 2022. 

Delivering such a large-scale, visionary change while overcoming “general editorial reluctance” was a delicate balancing act. Seeding editorial staffs and other stakeholders with the big idea of a “better block editor” paved the way, even touting as modest an idea as “easier cutting and pasting from Word.”

Hear how they did it from PMC’s Nicola Catton, Vice President of Product Delivery, and Gabriel Koen Vice President, Technology, as they dive into their PMC’s Switch to Gutenberg presentation at BigWP NYC. 

About BigWP

BigWP is the gathering spot for big thinkers doing big things with WordPress. 

We bring together developers, business leads, and product people who work with high-scale WordPress applications every day.

Explore all the talks from our November 2022 NYC event in our BigWP NYC 2022 playlist. 

You may also be interested in:

• A Brand(ed) New World for the Enterprise WordPress Community

Behind the scenes of News UK’s rampant speed to value

Long-time client News UK has a need for speed. When they discovered the benefits of the new Gutenberg block editor in WordPress, they saw an opportunity to accelerate their content production.

Gutenberg introduced a JavaScript-based drag-and-drop editor to WordPress, along with a customizable building block structure that streamlines content creation. Blocks can be used to insert, rearrange, and style media-rich content with very little technical knowledge – making it perfect for journalists, marketers, and other contributors who need to spin up content quickly without taxing their technical team or outside vendors.

An initial pilot program resulted in 60% improvement in speed to publish — so now they’re rolling out that pilot across global brands.

And because the Gutenberg roadmap includes continual product enhancements over the next several years, News UK knows they have a partner they can trust to keep them on the front lines of digital innovation.

With Gutenberg, we were able to publish a breaking news story in two minutes versus five minutes in Classic [WordPress]. The main reason for this is the reusable blocks which have been renamed ‘The Game Changer’.

Joel Davies, Head of Editorial Operations

Key results

• Streamlined publishing workflows in the new WordPress block editor
• 60% improvement in time to publish
• 30% reduction in the number of clicks to publish an article
• Created an internal community of shared resources that can be leveraged across sister publications

Learn more

To learn more about this project, please download the News UK case study PDF. And if you have any questions, simply get in touch!

Download case study

Launching a Global Ecommerce Platform for OKdo

Recently, we teamed up with our Silver agency partner Box UK to help OKdo launch a new, revenue-generating business line in less than eight months.

OKdo is a purveyor of technology products, focused on the rapidly-evolving single board computing (think Raspberry Pi) and internet of things (IoT) markets. OKdo was looking for a holistic technology platform to get their products in front of new customers as quickly as possible.

Flexibility at scale

After a three-month bidding process, OKdo selected Box UK as their development partner. With years of experience collaborating on complex WordPress implementations at scale, Box UK knew WordPress VIP was the perfect platform to power the end solution.

Because time was of the essence, the agility of this new platform (and its development) was key. OKdo also needed an ecommerce solution that would play nicely in multiple languages and currencies, as well as an adaptable architecture that could integrate seamlessly with third-party applications like NetSuite.

Thanks to the inherent flexibility of WordPress, the enterprise infrastructure of WordPress VIP, and the scalability of WooCommerce, we were able to deliver OKdo a multi-site, multi-language, and multi-currency ecommerce system in just under eight months.

“Certainly from my perspective, WordPress has been a great success—with WordPress VIP giving us that enterprise-level of assured quality on top.”

Adrian Goodman, Global Digital Product Owner

Key Results

• Launched a new product line in eight months
• Multisite installation powering sites in six languages
• Modular architecture with third-party integrations
• Enterprise ecommerce using WooCommerce
• Compliance with global trade and tax regulations

Learn more

To learn more about this project, please download the OKdo case study PDF. And if you have any questions, get in touch.

Evolving the Kaiser Family Foundation from Sitecore to WordPress VIP

DOWNLOAD CASE STUDY

The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) had 20 years’ worth of legacy data bottlenecked in Sitecore and Commonspot. WordPress VIP helped KFF unify all their content onto a single, intuitive platform. KFF’s teams are now empowered to advance their mission through beautiful and accessible data.

“Other data-heavy organizations like ours, still operate multiple websites with data and CMSes that are not integrated. I think we’re the first in our space to do that—with as much diverse content as we have all in one home.”

— David Rousseau, Kaiser Family Foundation Vice President

To learn more about our work with KFF, including detailed results of their successful migration, download the executive summary.

DOWNLOAD CASE STUDY

This post is part of a series providing executive summaries of WordPress VIP case studies. For a complete list of these executive summaries, click here. 

Remaking the New York Post for the Digital Age

The New York Post struggled to keep pace with the changing world of digital-first content. In critical need of new infrastructure, the Post migrated its proprietary CMS to WordPress VIP. Since then, the Post has enjoyed major gains in every key metric they track.

“Whether you wanted to look at it from a performance standpoint or in terms of speed metrics, or you wanted to look at downtime, or the traffic pre- and post-launch, all the data supported the decision that we made.”

Remy Stern, Chief Digital Officer, New York Post

To learn more about our work with the New York Post, including detailed results of their successful migration, download the executive summary.

Why Capgemini Migrated 38 Sites From Drupal to WordPress

Read the full case study

Capgemini is a multi-billion dollar international consultancy focused on leader technology services and digital transformation. Capgemini’s global workforce comprises 200,000 team members in over 40 countries. Capgemini underwent a huge re-platforming project, migrating their network of 38 sites from their legacy Drupal CMS to WordPress VIP.

Drupal had become a choke point, causing unnecessary production delays

Capgemini’s legacy Drupal CMS was no longer improving workflows or supporting their editorial needs. To make matters worse, Drupal’s lack of backward compatibility made the website increasingly unstable. Finally, the system no longer supported their digital roadmap. To make matters worse, teams across Capgemini were becoming frustrated with the lack of usability and extensibility.  Understandably, teams created their own solutions outside the group platform. These workarounds created a governance nightmare.

Capgemini migrated 38 sites to WordPress—which immediately increased productivity

Capgemini had a clear requirement: their new platform would promote a decentralized approach to publishing and provide a workflow and communication framework to increase visibility into the production process. Migrating to WordPress quickly alleviated Capgemini’s content creation challenges.

“We needed a system and a piece of technology that would force a reckoning of our team members to actually learn what digital publishing is, and what digital marketing means today, in a bunch of different cultures, languages, and markets.”

Parker Ward, Director, Content Marketing and Communications

Now, Capgemini’s teams deliver seamless user experiences across languages, cultures, and markets

WordPress VIP helped Capgemini leap into a new digital culture of creation with a robust, usable, and intuitive CMS. Now, the CMS supports Capgemini in delivering their business objectives and empowers their global network of teams to do their jobs effectively.

To learn more about this work with Capgemini, including detailed results of their successful migration, download the executive summary here. You can also watch Parker Ward discuss the project during his talk at Big WP London.

This post is part of a series providing executive summaries of WordPress VIP case studies. For a complete list of these executive summaries, click here.