AEM to WordPress Migration
for Manheim
About Manheim
Manheim is the world’s largest wholesale auto auction company and a part of the Cox Automotive family of brands. Manheim provides their clients with end-to-end wholesale vehicle solutions through physical, digital, and mobile auctions as well as other products and services. Their website serves as a digital command center, with resources about their products and services as well as links to connect clients to their different web portals.
Requirement: CMS Migration from AEM to WordPress
Manheim’s marketing website was running on Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), a closed-source, proprietary CMS. Besides grappling with slow and developer-dependent editorial workflows, Manheim was also incurring costs for functionalities they did not utilize.
Following the successful migration of other company websites and as part of a company-wide shift to adopting WordPress as the content management system, Cox Automotive decided to replatform Manheim’s marketing website to WordPress too.
With rtCamp’s engineering expertise, Manheim seamlessly migrated to WordPress on the WordPress VIP hosting infrastructure and utilized its intuitive editing tools and integrability- leading to a faster marketing team as well as a better ROI.
An Intuitive Editorial Experience that’s Developer-Free from End-to-End
rtCamp approached the project with the central goal of making Manheim’s editorial workflows developer-independent. While WordPress offers a significantly more code-free editing experience compared to AEM out-of-the-box, rtCamp leveraged the customizability and extensibility of WordPress to empower the editorial team to become truly developer-independent.
Swift and Independent Page-Creation for the Marketing Team
Manheim’s marketing team wanted a way to easily create and publish new pages without depending on developers. Considering its easy learning curve and quick turnaround time, rtCamp integrated Elementor, a drag-and-drop page builder plugin. rtCamp built the bulk of the new website’s pages using Elementor, and to allow the marketing team to do the same independently, designed and developed custom widgets that are in line with the new website’s design system. This grants the marketing team the ability to construct new pages independently while maintaining design consistency. Consequently, translating Figma designs into functional, live landing pages became a streamlined process.
Effortless, No-Code SEO Optimization
Manheim’s website received a natural SEO boost simply by migrating to WordPress, due to WordPress’ improved HTML tag management, accessibility parameters, and other SEO elements.
Unlike AEM, which often requires developer intervention, WordPress offers a significantly more user-friendly approach to SEO optimization out of the box. But to make things effortless, rtCamp integrated Yoast SEO, an SEO plugin that allows the marketing team to add crucial meta tags and descriptions directly in the editor while writing the post, without the need for developer help.
The end result was an editorial workflow that empowered the marketing team to handle page creation and SEO swiftly and intuitively while completely eliminating developer dependence.
Efficient Content Management with Custom Post Types
The Custom Post Types feature of WordPress expands its functionality beyond the traditional “post” and “page” content types and allows users to create new, specialized content structures tailored to their specific needs. This functionality transformed Manheim’s content organization. Manheim’s vast library of content is now meticulously categorized through custom post types such as Executive, Marketplace Policies, Locations, Services, and Solutions. This is not only great for scalability as the website grows but also simplifies content management by making it easier for editors to find what they’re looking for, reducing the risk of errors, and improving efficiency.
A Seamless Migration with rtCamp’s Migration Expertise
rtCamp facilitated a seamless migration from AEM to WordPress, not only transferring the data but also ensuring data structures were maintained.
Working in close collaboration with the Manheim team, rtCamp started off with a comprehensive content audit. This meticulous process ensured accurate mapping of data structures between AEM and WordPress. From migrating Manheim’s extensive multimedia library to tackling any technical hurdles encountered, rtCamp delivered a zero-downtime migration, ensuring Manheim’s website remained operational throughout the process.
Hands-on Training
rtCamp provided extensive hands-on training sessions to help the Manheim team quickly adapt to the functionalities and tools within WordPress. The training covered not only basic tasks such as creating a new page but also crafting brand new page templates using Elementor. Recognizing the shift from AEM, rtCamp provided a comprehensive user manual alongside the live-streamed training sessions.
The Manheim team is now fully and effectively able to utilize their new WordPress website, and enjoys a developer-free, intuitive editorial experience. All while benefiting from the fast and secure WordPress VIP hosting platform that maximizes return on investment.
