Want a Killer Website? You Need a Website Personalization Strategy

DXP is the best way to create deep personalization, deploy e-comm integration and engage with intelligent chat. 

Killer websites rule. A killer website can create a whole new business and millions and billions in revenue. A killer website can transform an existing business into an exciting magnet for customers and consumers. A killer website can become a brand in and of itself or take an existing brand to new Heights. A killer website changes everything. Don't you want a killer website? 

Ebay, Zillow, Instagram, and Facebook are examples of killer websites that birthed huge businesses—entire new industries in fact. What made them killer in the first place were not just totally cool ideas—but unique innovative ideas. What keeps them killer is they get better and better at embracing and nurturing their visitors into ultimately becoming customers. Think about your experiences with each of these websites. They remember who you are, and they unobtrusively tailor the experience to your needs. They are so good at what they do that the customers are happy that these websites know who they are and deliver content that anticipates their needs.  

This is the whole idea behind Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) in today's top retailers and consumer companies. Really, companies of any ilk are embracing DXP to get closer to customers, give them what they want even before they know they want it and dramatically drive revenue.  

The good news is you don't have to build a new website from scratch to make it killer. You can use the bones of your existing website and, by crafting an engaging digital experience, utterly transform how people interact with your site. At the same time, a DXP transforms how you personalize websites with content, bringing more efficiency which allows your web team to do far more with far less.   

Instead of an abstract or theoretical discussion about using a DXP to create a modern futuristic killer website, we’ll walk through real-world website personalization examples, in this case, focusing on how Sitefinity from Progress has modernized an array of now killer websites.  

Types of Website Personalization & Benefits

Companies large and small look to Sitefinity to engage audiences with thoughtful, relevant content; personalized experiences that increase conversions; a consistent, responsive experience across all channels, including mobile; ready integration with backend systems; digital commerce; and Sitefinity Insight to track, analyze and shape every step of the customer journey. 

Let’s walk through the major DXP benefits and how they were successfully exploited by our cast of killer website personalization solutions. Areas and use cases include: 

• Integrations 
• Multichannel 
• E-Commerce 
• Marketing/Leads/Conversions 
• Mobile 
• Financial Services, and 
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) 

Killer Integrations for Website Personalization

A website that doesn't talk to anything is basically useless these days. The killer features emerge when that website via the DXP or CMS solution talks with an array of useful third-party applications. “The ability to integrate with other technologies within your company is likely to be a key success factor. Find out how easily you can connect with the rest of your martech stack, for example CRM, marketing automation and ecommerce platforms, and whether there are standard APIs or more 

complicated customization requirements,” argued the CMS Vendor Selection Guide based on data from London Research. “Look too at how straightforward it is to connect to the systems used by other departments, such as sales, supply chain management or BI. It’s also important to see what level of integration is required with the systems used by your partners or agencies.” 

Best Western GB (Great Britain) 

Best Western GB (Great Britain) may be 53 years old, but its web thinking is as fresh as anyone’s. With over 260 hotels, Best Western GB knows success. But the hotel business is as competitive as it gets, and COVID made the fight for customers fiercer than ever. And while Best Western GB is a good size hotel chain, it is dwarfed by industry giants with deep pockets. “They have huge budgets and are moving incredibly fast. If we’re not moving forward, they’ll get ahead of us.” noted Chris Bowling, Senior Digital Manager, Best Western Hotels GB. 

Today Best Western GB has a crucial advantage over rivals – killer website personalization built with Sitefinity. That wasn’t always the case.  

While personalization and multichannel support were important, so was integration. The new site was deeply integrated with the main Best Western International platform to automate the booking process from within the website. To serve valuable repeat customers, the site connects to the Best Western Rewards loyalty program, syncing the program’s discounts and benefits to Reward members’ booking experience. Finally, the website integrates all 250-plus hotels which sync their data nightly to the website, so customer offerings and hotel information are always up to date. 

That is only the tip of the integration iceberg. “A hotel has well-over 100 data points, and each hotel is a content item inside Sitefinity. Sitefinity has such depth, we were able to piggyback some of the core architecture, and then enhance it for speed to be able to manage that volume of content,” said Rehan. 

The business returns keep rolling in, some due to easier checkout. “When we redeveloped the checkout process, we had an improvement of 30% in conversions from redoing the UX. That is a huge change.” said Rehan. 

Dublin Airport 

Airline customers are a demanding lot. When they want information, they want it now and they don't want to work hard to get it. An airports’ website is critical to meeting these needs. That means the website must gather and present data from an array of sources, from flight information to parking lot billing, ticketing, and ticket status, online payments – the list is as long as the airport's stretchiest runway. 

Already a Sitefinity customer since 2010, Dublin Airport didn’t have to create an all-new website — just add integrations and other cool DXP features to the one they already had. Part of this was reigning in a gaggle of micro-sites and making them mobile-first. At the time, the airport consolidated four legacy corporate websites into one integrated, passenger-friendly experience.  

Third party integrations include tying to APIs managing flight information—including arrivals and departures, booking, parking, and fast tracking through airport security and lounges. Meanwhile, Sitefinity tied into the airport’s multi-campaign marketing platform.  

The results are in. Dublin Airport gained big page traffic increases and referrals to third-party booking systems. Mobile traffic increased from 65% of all average monthly traffic to nearly 75%, a testament to the improved mobile experience. The Airport Club for frequent fliers has grown with the new omnichannel experience, with mobile revenue nearly 40%.  

Killer E-Comm: DXP to COVID Rescue 

We all know how Amazon and other e-commerce killed many brick and mortar operations. COVID was then the straw that broke many survivors’ backs.  

Tom Tailor, the German lifestyle brand wasn’t about to let that happen to them. In 2020, the COVID pandemic forced a slew of Tom Tailor’s brick-and-mortar locations to close (fortunately it wasn’t forever), the company immediately set to work on a killer new ecommerce experience site built from scratch with Sitefinity.  

Why from scratch? The crazy thing is the fashion brand was so successful it never saw the need to sell anything online. Now it did.  

Tom Tailor turned to Slovenian digital agency Vareo which turned to Sitefinity to quicky build a killer e-comm website integrated with the Ucommerce ecommerce solution. “With other ecommerce systems, you always run into the problem of content management,” said Gorazd Planinc, Martech Solution Architect and Owner, Vareo. “You wind up constantly moving between systems to run different parts of the business. Sitefinity with the Ucommerce integration enabled us to do everything from one place—this is real power when it comes to selling products,” he added.

Sitefinity integration came in handy for other services beyond Ucommerce. The new site also integrates with the company’s ERP solution and image CDN to show products for sale. 

The results were fast and furious—killer, you might say. Ten days after the e-comm site went live, it outsold the average brick-and-mortar store generating an extra 10% in revenue with no additional marketing and promotion expenses. 

SEO shot through the roof, with the SEO score leaping 71%.  

Did it cost more money to make more money? Quite the opposite. Since Sitefinity is so user-friendly, non-technical marketing staff fully control the site with no need for partner help—cutting the company’s agency retainer expenses 70%.

Build a Killer Customer Conversion Machine Through Personalization 

Cambridge Innovation Institute (CII) 

How do you cut through the website content clutter? Personalization. “The ability to serve personalized and relevant content is becoming increasingly important to companies, as consumers become less tolerant of a blanket approach that doesn’t take their own specific interests and behavior into account. A modern CMS must allow personalization through the creation of user personas and the ability to segment users based on a plethora of data sources, ranging from purchase history and CRM data to referral and search keyword information,” advises The CMS Vendor Selection Guide.

Killer content is the key to customer engagement, excitement, creating leads and ultimately converting them into customers. Cambridge Innovation Institute (CII) had no problem with the amount of content they had. In fact, they had the opposite problem: Too much content—in fact, way too much content. So much so that visitors struggle to find the content. 

“We were frontloading so much information, our visitors just weren’t willing to comb through it to find the relevant content,” explained Jaime Parlee, Marketing Analytics Director, CII. 

Thanks to Sitefinity, CII personalized the customer journey, delivered the most relevant content —and quadrupled their conversion rates at the same time. The company also enjoyed a 30% increase in visitor engagement. 

MasterControl Boosts Conversion Rates Over 57% with Progress Sitefinity 

For over 25 years, MasterControl has mastered the art of integrated Quality Management Systems (QMS), selling the software to develop products helping people live longer, healthier and fully enjoyable lives. The company’s 1,000 or so customers are spread across the globe, but each need a close connection to their QMS vendor, as do QMS prospects. 

The MasterControl team integrated Sitefinity with an array of solutions, including the Pardo marketing automation tool to track lead information from first to last touch and streamline lead scoring. Other integrations included: Uberflip, Influitive, Mouseflow and Evergage to manage, measure and optimize the marketing funnel. 

Of course, Sitefinity also drove the new customer-facing site, featuring close API integration with Salesforce that supports authentication of customers and grants permission to read FAQs, release notes, downloads and more. 

How AI Creates Killer Website Personalization

Once you have a PRETTY killer website, there is one way to make it TOTALLY killer—AI!  

Progress teamed with Pulse QA to survey 100 global technology and marketing executives to learn how they plan to gas up their DXP with AI. “Applied artificial intelligence (AI) is integral to a superior digital experience platform (DXP) implementation, and therefore a superior visitor experience. With AI, organizations can identify and provide the best ‘next step’ in a visitor’s digital journey,” the Practical AI Applications to Prioritize for DXP report found. “This helps brands deliver 

experiences that are tailored to their audience’s specific wants, needs and preferences.”  

The survey found that nearly all tech leaders plan to add new technology and automation to improve their DXP and maximize operational efficiency. “Over the next 12-18 months, 96% of technology leaders say implementing new tools that improve their organizations’ DXP is a priority—including 33% who say it’s a high- or top priority initiative,” the report argued. 

Find out firsthand who had the most killer Sitefinity websites for 2022: Sitefinity CMS Website of the Year Winners

See the Winners