Recapping the SftB #5 event dedicated to Storyblok's Partners

Our Stories from the Blok events have become an important component of our story and an excellent opportunity for us to share the latest developments from the Storyblok ecosystem and the larger web development community.

The 5th edition of Stories from the Blok was held on February 24, 2022. The live event, which can be found on our YouTube channel, was focused on our agency partners and their interactions with Storyblok.

Through conversations with partners where we talked about their case studies, we presented some unique projects created with Storyblok. In addition, we shared tips on how to improve your customers' buying journey. Lastly, the attendees had a chance to learn about the new updates to our Partner Program.

This article is a recap of the SftB #5: Partners Edition.

The State of Storyblok
Presented by Dominik Angerer, CEO and Co-founder of Storyblok

Founded in 2017, Storyblok has become a global player in the CMS market in only 4 years, which has exceeded all expectations and goals. Moreover, Storyblok was placed #1 CMS worldwide on G2, and in the 100 fastest growing software products, which Dominik attributes to the hard work of Storyblok’s team and the partnerships the company has formed over the years.

Looking at the state of Storyblok today, the company is powering more than 100,000 spaces (projects). There are close to 70,000 active users and close to 1000 registered partners. Some of Storyblok’s projects have helped its clients increase traffic by 123%, see a 50% revenue growth in just 60 days, and experience a 3 times faster website performance. The company’s client, Marc O'Polo, was able to implement Storyblok’s CMS in only 14 days. Amazing results!

Dominik gave an exciting announcement about Storyblok V2 and informed the audience that Storyblok V2 is available for everyone and can be accessed via your Storyblok space. All of your content, your pipeline, and releases workflow are now available in V2. A few exciting updates, amongst many, are: V2 has a new dashboard that includes new and updated features. It offers a completely new space area that makes it easy for users to get to the original configuration options, get easier access to their space IDs, and configure a new space much faster. V2’s upcoming sprint will have a new activities page, a new multi-selection option for selecting stories, presets of components where users can predefine certain rules and predefine certain content with default values for different blocks and components, new apps, and much more.

Soryblok’s future will be defined by substantial growth. As a remote-first company, Storyblok is hiring more people from all over the world. From 24 employees at the end of 2020, to 115 today, to 331 by the end of 2022, he invites you to join Storyblok’s international team. Moreover, Storyblok is excited about all the events taking place in the near future, from Overdose Experts Lounge, to Martech WebSesh, to its own Stories from the Blok #6, and much more.

The Story Behind Renault Originals by Razorfish
Presented by David Ouanounou, Client Services Director at Razorfish and David Vettese, Technical Director at Razorfish France

Storyblok’s partner, Razorfish, presented their Renault Originals project, an online virtual museum that features the original models produced by Renault starting in 1898. When asked to describe the project in one sentence, the speakers said, “Razorfish has designed, built, and marketed a 100% virtual museum for Renault in order to reconnect with fans and instill the brand heritage in pop culture”. In addition, Razorfish was able to design a fully integrated experience between the experiential museum site and the e-store site where fans can purchase Renault branded merchandise. The most exciting aspect of this project is that this is the first time for a car manufacturer to digitize its own collection in the virtual world. In order to reproduce realistic iconic car models that are part of the Renault collection, Razorfish has leveraged an innovative mix of technologies called 3D photogrammetry.

Speaking of technology, David and David discussed how Storyblok helped them achieve their goals of creating a highly immersive visitor experience and having no boundaries from a creative perspective. They added that Storyblok allowed for full control of the front end without restrictions and a very fast time-to-market. Lastly, to give the highest digital experience to many visitors across the world, the original museum was launched in 6 languages, which was enabled using Stortyblok’s CMS. The whole project was built in less than six months, and today, with straightforward interfaces, Renault can manage their content without external help and with the help of Storyblok’s real-time visual editor. This is due to the way Storyblok manages content and content types using blocks, which is very intuitive and comprehensive for non-technology users.

Functional Nutrition’s Vision for the Future with Story of AMS
Presented by Robert van Hunsel, CEO of Functional Nutrition Group

Robert, from Functional Nutrition Group, described the company’s struggles during Brexit and the projects that took place to ensure the company had a prosperous future. Founded in 2007 by David Brassey, Functional Nutrition’s vision for the future is to see people live healthier, longer, more enriched lives by taking greater responsibility for their own health and wellness by using natural healing methods. However, when Brexit came into effect, their clients started looking elsewhere for products because products were getting more expensive due to additional costs, VAT, and the additional difficulties with shipping products to customers. After some consideration, Functional Nutrition decided to relocate to the Netherlands and update their B2C platform, Supplement Hub, as it was lacking payment options, flexibility, multi-lingual availability, etc. They sought out several agencies to manage the redevelopment of Supplement Hub and decided to hand the reins to Story of AMS, an award-winning digital agency that specializes in the field of eCommerce.

Story of AMS, a certified Storyblok partner, suggested a collaboration with Storyblok’s CMS based on the Visual Editor and the functionalities it provides, which turned out to be an excellent solution for Functional Nutrition’s e-commerce platform. Robert pointed out that the easy integration and the ease of using Storyblok were the two most significant aspects that made a difference in their experience with the platform. The company only needed some brief guidance from Story of AMS regarding how to use Storyblok, whether it was how to add images to their products, or populate their store with products, or even work on the translations.

Lastly, Robert revealed that the future for Functional Nutrition is very ambitious as they plan to expand to 10 new countries in 10 new languages by the end of next year. The fact that Storyblok supports content in multiple languages and integrates with various tools to manage translations is going to make a big difference in achieving their goal.

The 20-2-20 Rule for a powerful eCommerce experience
Presented by Sam van Hees, Co-founder and CMO of Story of AMS

In today’s world, online shopping is more dominant and, as a result, we have entered a digital-first economy where if companies do not follow, they will miss out on valuable customers. Therefore, the 20-2-20 rule is a strategy that eCommerce brands can incorporate in their web-shops to create a superior online shopping experience. Because the eCommerce experience is the most important part of the buying journey, brands need to find creative ways to capture the visitors’ attention.

Therefore, customers need to be able to understand what a company does in the first 20 seconds of their visit to your website. How can you do this? The most important part is to forget about product specifications and instead think about product features. And think of features as in hobbies, activities, and benefits that people can understand. Features that help them visualize the product and help them understand how the product can add value to their lives.

In the next 2 minutes, they need to learn about your brand values in order to get engaged. How do you tell a story that drives engagement? The core of a relationship between a brand and a person is a set of shared values. If a person can identify themselves with a brand, you have a potentially life-long connection. So, with this piece of storytelling, you want to share the values of your brand. What you stand for, why you do what you do, and who you are helping with your products.

Lastly, in order to build a relationship with your customers, you need to have at least 20 minutes of content accessible throughout your eCommerce website so they can get to know your brand. At the end of the day, a customer will only buy from you if they trust you. And trust is earned by answering all of the questions a customer might have about the products you're selling. The most effective and scalable way to do this is with content. Blogs, videos, podcasts, you name it as long as it educates and inspires your customers.

Storyblok Partner Program Updates
Presented by Elena Granina, Partner Success Manager at Storyblok

Elena’s presentation started by outlining each step of the Partner Journey. The Introduction Call is the first step of your Partner Journey, where you will discover the benefits offered by the Partner Program and Storyblok. The teams take this time to get to know each other. The next step is the Formal Onboarding which consists of two enablement sessions with your dedicated Partner Success Manager. Storyblok organizes these live sessions exclusively for your team so that you can learn, ask questions, and jump-start your projects. The Technical Enablement Session is a 90-minute developer to developer workshop, with a demo, best practices, and a Q&A session. The Sales Enablement Session is dedicated to outlining sales resources, revenue share program, and how to do a project handover. The Partner Journey is designed to guide you on a path to becoming a fully activated and certified Storyblok partner. The partner team continues to be on hand to support you in building your business with Storyblok, with leads, co-marketing, and project support.

Elena outlined some of the benefits of the Partner Program, which include unlimited and free development spaces, free staff members, a free lifetime license to build your agency website with Storyblok, and a dedicated Partner Success Managers team. Her focus was on the newest co-marketing benefit, which features a 5000-euro annual marketing budget for shared marketing activities. She pointed out that the partner team is very grateful to work with Storyblok’s partners on case studies, guest articles, events, and other shared PR activities to showcase your work and your expertise.

Key Takeaways

We invite you to visit our Youtube channel and watch Stories from the Blok #5: Partners Edition.

You can also register for Stories from the Blok #6, where we will focus on WomenInTech. The event will take place on March 31, 2022.