Discover the growing complexity of digital experiences and the challenges for business leaders, technical leads and practitioners.
Digital experiences are growing more complex. But is it external pressures or internal inefficiencies stirring the waters? Changing consumer habits make it harder to build, maintain and scale digital experiences. This blog post explores how this impacts business leaders, technical leads and practitioners alike, highlighting the importance of aligning your digital experience’s building blocks. We will try to cover some strategic considerations as well as give you some practical tips to help you achiever better outcomes. So, let’s discover:
- What drives digital complexity—market trends, technology fregmentation or the lack of internal alignment?
- How can organizations align goals and resources to maximize impact?
- What factors are crucial when choosing a CMS vendor for sustained success?
By understanding these elements, you can avoid burnout and get the most from your team. Let’s dig into it.
Tackling Daily Priorities or Focusing on the Big Picture?
Between errands, meetings and endless to-do lists, your priorities constantly shift. Content management often sits at the core of your digital experience but it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Struggling with an ineffective approach to content can halt innovation.
If you’re seeing business slow down, high churn rates or low lead volume, it may be time to rethink your digital setup. Equip every team member with the right technology and processes to meet the evolving needs of your audience.
Simple Fixes or Deeper Issues?
How long does it take to correct a typo on your homepage? If it’s more than 15 seconds, this is likely a sign of deeper inefficiencies. When minor tasks like this become obstacles, it’s a wake-up call to re-evaluate your approach to content management. Inefficiencies that seem small can spread like weeds, slowing down growth and undermining your success.
When you look at the specifics that drew us to Sitefinity, key differentiators included the cleanliness of the backend, frontend UI and the workability from our standpoint to easily administer the site. I cannot tell you how much more refreshing it’s been that I can go in and make my own text changes; I can update the material that gets uploaded and downloaded to the site ... and everyone trusts the content, putting us in an even greater position as we continue to scale.
Rick Hickey
Creative Director at American Air Filter
Go Beyond the Visual Website Refresh
A common catalyst for a digital experience overhaul is a new CMO joining the company or change in direction, often ignoring internal processes. Focusing solely on a redesign without addressing internal needs leads to short-term gains but long-term inefficiencies. Team silos, scattered technology and data fragmentation are key issues, especially when planning campaigns or aligning goals. A holistic approach, integrating talent, technology and strategy can lead to sustainable growth.
One way to address the challenge is to put the site redesign aside and focus on identifying friction points along the entire customer lifecycle and overlay business metrics and industry trends on top.
Don’t Skip the Strategic Assessment
Refreshing your digital experience should go beyond aesthetics and be the result, not a goal itself. A thorough assessment of your current setup, from the tech stack to team workflows, can guide a smarter approach. By documenting the rationale and engaging teams early, you’ll reduce inefficiencies and increase impact. Avoiding superficial changes paves the way for lasting growth and helps you steer clear of hidden pitfalls. Lastly, putting practitioners first and investing into customizing the backend and team onboarding will continue to deliver results in the long run.
Incorporate data about your customers, markets and business metrics to understand the challenges you are trying to overcome and the outcomes you want to achieve
Align Goals Across Teams
To meet core business metrics, it’s essential to examine all moving parts. Whether it’s enhancing user engagement, improving content management or scaling for future growth, aligning goals with KPIs is crucial. Break down silos, streamline workflows and implement tools that directly impact conversion, engagement and productivity. Clearly defined goals and cross-team collaboration lay the foundation for digital transformation.
One of the major challenges American Air Filters addressed by revamping their DX was the opportunity to reduce overdependence on IT for day-to-day tasks. Rethinking their DX also led to an increased volume of confirmed leads—benefiting the business beyond improving the content management efficiency.
Hope for the Best. Plan for Even Better Outcomes
Effective DX overhauls start with solid planning. Skipping research can lead to attractive but ineffective websites that miss business goals. Know your ideal customers, their touchpoints and their needs. Gather insights from across teams to minimize costly adjustments in later project stages or performance pitfalls post-launch. Proper planning is what Kubota did and collaborated internally and externally to set the stage for meaningful growth and ROI.
The Kubota Tractor Company’s website infrastructure and hosting were being done in-house, which meant that releases and code changes would cause website downtime. Kubota sought to empower the development team to offload infrastructure management and work on complex, mission-critical projects, while putting the entire brand experience in the hands of the marketers.
Strategize. Scaffold. Design a Unified Experience
Managing multiple digital platforms? Consolidation can maximize efficiency and brand consistency. Define your vision, determine the number of platforms needed and decide on regional or linguistic variations. Collaborate with teams to build prototypes, test strategies and refine designs. A flexible CMS can streamline these efforts, reducing IT dependencies and optimizing user experiences across all digital touchpoints.
Ruukki’s team modernized 30 Sitefinity sites in three months, boosting Google site speed by 700%, resulting in a 30% increase in page views and 50% more B2B leads.
Define Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
Understanding your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is the bedrock of digital success. Tailor your prototypes, designs and content strategy based on how your audience engages with your brand. By adapting to their preferences, you maximize conversions and improve user experiences. A well-integrated CMS can streamline multichannel delivery, delivering relevant and engaging interactions across devices and channels.
Kensington optimized content, customer journeys and the overall customer experience with Sitefinity Insight; consolidating six separate sites into a single platform; benefiting from better-qualified leads.
Choose Effective Content Management
Content management requires balancing time, cost and resources. Identify your content managers, establish workflows and embrace content reuse. Localization, multisite management and AI integration can optimize content reach and minimize maintenance costs. Modern CMS tools simplify these processes, freeing up time for teams to focus on high-impact work and maintain a cohesive brand presence. Take for example Tourism Barrie.
Tourism Barrie’s team of two content marketers manages digital experiences for thousands of daily visitors, generating millions of interactions and contributing to the $600 million local economy.
How to Approach Traffic/Demand Generation
Effective demand generation requires a multi-channel approach. From brand searches to SEO, to social media and PPC, your CMS should support each channel seamlessly. Personalization, especially for repeat visitors, enhances engagement across platforms. Your traffic strategy should adapt to evolving search landscapes and new AI technologies, continuously measuring performance and optimizing content and tactics to achieve the best results.
Align Content and Campaigns
Optimizing content starts with a unified approach to KPIs and breaking down data silos. Use a CDP to centralize customer data, track campaign performance and bridge insights across teams. Leverage A/B testing to refine campaigns and let data guide content strategy. By aligning on KPIs, you turn analysis into action and consistently improve your content’s impact.
Cambridge Innovation Institute created flexible, personalized digital experiences, improving visitor engagement by 30% and quadrupling online conversions through targeted content delivery and data integration.
Integrate Business and Customer Data
Integrated data is the foundation of a strong digital experience. Break down silos by connecting your website with CRM, MarTech and CDP systems to make customer data actionable. This integration allows for real-time personalization and targeted marketing freeing your team to focus on strategic initiatives rather than manual tasks. Integrations that can help reduce manual tasks include integrations with digital asset management systems with translations services. Search or vertical-specific integrations can help improve the customer journey. Dublin Airport is a great example of integrating external systems with their core website.
Dublin Airport consolidated four websites into one, enhancing the traveler experience and revenue. A mobile-first UI/UX and third-party integrations increased mobile revenue by 40% and mobile traffic by 75%.
Try Personalization for Better Outcomes
Personalized experiences are now the norm, not the exception. Start small, test and scale personalization efforts to cover all customer journey stages. Break down data silos and integrate core systems like CRM and email platforms. Incremental personalization strategies yield long-term returns, transforming customer interactions into meaningful connections.
Teachers Building Society boosted mortgage lending by 46% with a welcoming, personalized experience for home buyers.
Consider Security and Compliance
Compliance isn’t just a checkbox—it’s the foundation of a trustworthy DX. Support data residency, approval workflows, role-based permissions, audit trails and encryption to meet regulatory requirements and protect customer data. A proactive approach to compliance safeguards your business and builds customer confidence.
Goodbody leveraged Sitefinity Cloud to enhance marketing agility while prioritizing compliance and security. Hosted on Azure, Sitefinity Cloud offered GDPR tools, governance workflows and compatibility with Microsoft systems, enabling efficient, secure customer engagement and digital transformation in the regulated financial services industry.
Evaluate Deployment Models
Choosing the right deployment model—SaaS, PaaS or on-premises—can enhance experience management. Put simply:
- SaaS offers simplicity
- PaaS balances flexibility and managed services
- On-premises CMS deployment delivers full control
Assess your scalability, customization and disaster recovery needs as well as availability of internal resources to support your DX to find the model that supports both current and future goals.
Racing WA consolidated 12 WordPress sites into a unified digital experience using Sitefinity Cloud, selecting a PaaS deployment with a Next.js frontend. This hybrid/headless architecture enabled a seamless, engaging user experience and centralized content management.
Compare Alternatives
The right CMS vendor can be pivotal for sustained growth. Prioritize support options, adaptability and key features like intuitive UI, flexible technology, relevant experiences and scalability. A well-chosen CMS will help you evolve your DX alongside your business, supporting your team’s journey to deliver exceptional digital experiences.
Download our CMS vendor selection guide to learn more.
Roll Up Your Sleeves
Modern digital experiences are complex, demanding the alignment of diverse teams and technologies. If resources are limited or internal priorities are still under discussion, starting small and focusing deeply can be a smart strategy. But your customers won’t wait and your team deserves the right tools to succeed. Embracing a composable approach allows you to incrementally integrate new technologies, capabilities and solutions at your own pace—avoiding overcommitment as you grow. Sitefinity is here to empower your growth. Reach out today to discover how we can help drive your success.
Alexander Shumarski
Alexander Shumarski is a Sitefinity Product Marketing Manager at Progress. He has spent the past 10+ years managing large-scale website initiatives and has deep-dived into online media and e-commerce industries. An adventurer at heart and a power CMS user, he has embarked on a journey to empower marketers to tell compelling stories without reliance on IT.