The UK’s largest used vehicle business creates more engaging websites across 33 countries with Magnolia

The bca.co.uk website had become outdated. The company’s content management system (CMS) rigidly limited the marketing team’s capabilities and didn’t support modern ways of building engaging digital experiences. “The site looked really old. Some pages were essentially text documents,” says Brad Lucas, marketing director at BCA. “The architecture was outdated as well. The frontend components and processes for creating pages were inflexible. We needed to make a change."

Modernizing the content management system was a top priority. “If you had compared our old website with competitors’ sites, you might have thought we were a small business—but we aren’t,” says Lucas. “Because our execution was limited by what we could do with our old CMS, we were delivering a pretty poor experience.”

Updating the existing CMS was not a possibility, as it was several versions behind what was currently available from the vendor. But the team was determined to explore all options available.

Lucas recognized that working with outdated, inflexible tools could be frustrating for team members and ultimately even lead to churn: “In marketing, if you don’t supply your people with modern tools to do new things, they will get bored and leave. We wanted to make sure we could retain and further develop our talented team members.”

The BCA team began exploring CMS options online but did not initially find the right fit. “It felt like vendors were using sledgehammers to crack a nut,” says Lucas. “They offered massive, monolithic CMS solutions that we couldn’t really budget for.”

The team learned about Magnolia from an online article, and the Magnolia digital experience platform (DXP) looked intriguing. “We whittled our selection down to three companies and met with all three during a two-week period. It became clear that Magnolia was the right fit for us, given the vision we had for our frontend,” says Lucas. 

After selecting Magnolia, the BCA team chose to work with PRODYNA, a Platinum Magnolia Partner that designs and builds Magnolia-based architectures. Together, the PRODYNA team helped BCA transition to a Kubernetes environment and then build a UI library and design system in React using Storybook. “By bringing together Magnolia, PRODYNA, and the team at BCA, we knew we had a good technical fit and a strong cultural fit for the long haul,” says Lucas.

BCA was deep into the Magnolia implementation process with PRODYNA when the pandemic forced significant changes in business operations. “People around the world were staying home and companies furloughed employees. That gave us a window to tear down our old home page and put up the new one with very little risk to our business,” says Lucas.

At the same time, the BCA team had to accommodate a major shift in buying. “In the past, 70% of our sales involved people turning up to an auction hall, with 30% buying online,” says Lucas. “When the pandemic hit, we had to move our business 100% online. Our leadership asked us how we could use this website project to enable BCA to continue selling.”

Magnolia’s native React support helped BCA scale up promotion of online sales during the pandemic. “We built on React and then combined it with Magnolia so we can update all of the sales easily,” says Lucas. “Once they’re scheduled to go live, an API feed publishes those sales on the frontend.”

By using Magnolia to deploy a modern, composable tech stack, the BCA team has been able to build a more polished online presence. “Magnolia has professionalized our outputs,” says Lucas. “One of our executives recently commented that the new website makes us look much better as a business—to customers and other businesses. We no longer look like a small company. The site better reflects our status as a large business that is number one in our marketplace.”

Adopting a modern platform has also helped spark engagement and enthusiasm among team members. “People are super engaged around Magnolia,” says Lucas. “With the old solution, we didn’t bother to upgrade often—team members weren’t very invested. Now, whenever there’s an upgrade available, we make sure it’s done. We try to capitalize on new features right away.”

Magnolia DXP is one of the few technologies that people across the business refer to by name. “Now when we have a new business request or challenge, we hear, ‘Can you guys look at how Magnolia can help get this done?’” says Lucas.

In addition to the primary bca.co.uk website, BCA hosts several other sites, including B2B sites, European versions of the customer website, and more. For example, the company spun up a site for Supreme Wheels—a part of the BCA business that refurbishes damaged wheels and applies high-quality finishes. 

A growing number of these sites are now powered by Magnolia. “The European team is mirroring our tech stack and rolling out the Magnolia platform across an additional 32 countries,” says Lucas. “The careers microsite also runs on Magnolia—we’ve built a dedicated app where the recruitment team can easily manage job listings. And in the future, we’ll likely use Magnolia for some of the sites that we operate as a third party for other businesses.”