Magento Page Builder is one of the new functionalities included in the most recent release of Magento 2.3.1. Designed to increase the capabilities of eCommerce platform administrators and streamline page creation, this new program allows users to design and develop pages without extensive knowledge of HTML and CSS. The module itself was designed to be easy and intuitive to use. Of course, having some knowledge of HTML and CSS development is always beneficial, but even someone without those technical skills can navigate Magento Page Builder to create landing pages, promote content, and manage products.
Endless Content Capabilities
Having rich content is important, and Page Builder enables users to create and manage both dynamic and static content. The drag-and-drop functionality means endless possibilities for customized design, and live previews are provided so you can see how the content will look in your storefront. You can upload all types of media—from images to videos and sliders to maps— to create a more visual experience, and layout capabilities such as rows, columns, and grids can display written content in the most convenient and aesthetically pleasing way. Content can be embellished even further with design capabilities such as borders, custom fonts, and text styling options.
Components like buttons, promotional banners, forms and more are available as well, so your eCommerce page can be customized and designed to be unique rather than a one-size-fits-all layout that other eCommerce platforms tend to be known for. For the end-user, all these capabilities are at their fingertips with no coding required. Want to take it a step further? Page Builder elements can be customized even further in the back-end for users with development and coding skills.
To speed up the page-building process even more, Page Builder allows users to create templates for future use. Not only do templates enable a quicker build for the user, but they can be designed to align to the company brand so each page is unified with similar styles, layouts, colors, fonts, and more. While you can enable Page Builder to design pages that derive their style from your default style sheets for a consistent look, the program also offers the flexibility to override those settings for those who want to use their own code with different fonts, colors, and layout options.
Back-end Functionality
Aesthetics aside, a good eCommerce site needs to be intuitive and well organized. That means product content and data needs to be curated, consistent, and above all: correct. Since the Magento Commerce platform can be closely integrated with your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, your eCommerce system should already be drawing from your product content data. You can begin to customize the presentation of that data even further. When shoppers view a product, they want information to be presented in an organized way. Page Builder allows you to create tabs for your product pages that will compartmentalize data into categories such as description and specs, reviews and ratings, shipping details, and more.
In addition, Page Builder was designed to be SEO friendly, so users can add keywords and metadata to the pages they build. You have the ability to specify whether search engines can crawl and find your page titles and descriptions presented in search results, and even choose specific URLs. For merchants that have multiple commerce sites, Magento Page Builder has sorting capabilities that span multi-site architecture. So you can create all the pages necessary for multiple sites from Page Builder and specify which site they will live on.
When creating pages, you can also specify the hierarchy of the page and where it will reside. Say, for example, a merchant has a root page labeled “apparel” that pulls all their offerings with apparel tags. If they wanted to break those offerings down even further, Page Builder would allow them to create category subpages below that parent page, such as tops, bottoms, shoes, etc. These pages would only populate with products that fit the tags assigned to that subpage to streamline the shopping experience overall.
Marketing Made Easy
The modern consumer expects fresh and current content each time they visit their favorite eCommerce site, and for many merchants it can be difficult to keep up. Adding and swapping content in Page Builder is quick, easy, and can be done directly in the module without IT and development intervention, so your pages won’t get stale and outdated. And because shopping never sleeps, the program offers options for scheduling content to launch at any time. Users can schedule sales and promotional advertisements to go live on the site, set time limits for coupon codes, schedule product price changes, and more.
These capabilities are especially helpful during peak shopping periods like the holiday season when sales and promotions could be changing daily. In Page Builder, users can create promotions and schedule them to begin and end, as well as create specific pages to populate with related products. For instance, if a site was to launch a Valentine’s day sale, an eCommerce admin could schedule the promotion to launch, as well as set rules to only display items related to the sale, such as all red and pink products.
The addition of the Page Builder module to the Magento 2.3.1 platform has vastly extended content management capabilities for merchants, while reducing technical development requirements on the back-end. Customization capabilities such as these can benefit businesses at any size and really give commerce players a leg up in a competitive digital landscape. A perfect blend of content and commerce capabilities, Page Builder is just another tool you can utilize on the journey to provide a true omnichannel eCommerce experience.
