P.F. Chang's Increases New Users by 40% and Makes Site More Nimble, Secure and Accessible with Progress Sitefinity

Over the years, P.F. Chang’s original Progress® Sitefinity® website implementation and supporting technologies grew outdated as the digital world evolved. Even the most basic of website changes would often require a frontend developer – a dependency that is entirely avoidable and contributes to higher overhead costs for website management and maintenance. This challenge was paired with difficulties in keeping pace with daily updates to the website and promotional content – all time-sensitive updates. 

Additionally, the third-party online ordering experience was hindered by a clunky experience, slow page load times and exceptionally high abandonment rates. The customer rewards functionality of the website, driven by integrations to internal systems, left much to be desired as well both in terms of UX and modern development practices.

Further, P.F. Chang’s was heavily committed to providing exceptional usability, with strict adherence to WCAG AA guidelines and accommodating users of all types as consistent with the American Disabilities Act (ADA). Proper development practices, content editor training and specialized testing tools would be necessary to achieve proper accessibility practices across their website.

Progress Premium Partner, Americaneagle.com, was selected to consult, plan and execute the website revamp project. As Craig Briars, sales director at Americaneagle.com, said, “P.F. Chang’s investment into digital represents their sharp focus on providing exceptional guest and customer experiences. They saw the value of this project, with real potential for cost reductions across operational, infrastructure and resourcing.”

P.F. Chang’s used this project as a catalyst to update internal development standards while simultaneously modernizing their internal software packages, libraries and DevOps processes across the organization. It incorporated a transition to the most recent version of Angular is supported by Sitefinity Bootstrap and eliminated a patchwork of other legacy tools. With the site redesign, P.F. Chang’s was able to take advantage of the latest and greatest capabilities, including the new admin and content editing UI, an intuitive change that was welcomed by their marketing team.

Sitefinity’s extensibility allowed for secure and performant integration with third-party systems, including an internal CDP and a rewards management database (Yext) for personalized location content, and an online ordering system. The team moved to a widgetized structure across the site to allow content editors and marketers to make content changes. Previously hardcoded website pages providing loyalty information or account details were high-trafficked and are now built on Sitefinity.

As the director of eCommerce at P.F. Chang’s continued, “Being able to self-manage our website and control content without restriction or technical blockers was a big win. In addition, being able to personalize content based on a user’s location, the conversion funnels, especially for online ordering, lead a user to exactly where they need to go – without extra clicks or steps. The digital experience is consistent, familiar and can be tailored to a visitor – much like their interactions when guests dine with us. That unified brand experience is a key pillar of our desired customer journeys”

Tapping into Americaneagle.com’s deep experience for all things ADA Accessibility, the new P.F. Chang’s website was developed to WCAG 2.1 AA standards and underwent both manual and automated testing. For automated accessibility testing and ongoing monitoring of the website’s accessibility benchmark scores, Americaneagle.com and P.F. Chang’s tapped Siteimprove and used its extension into the Sitefinity CMS.