What makes a high-performing website?

Collect the right data at the right time

We see two main issues regarding data collection within corporate websites: 

1. Websites are designed to allow users to input incorrect or poor-quality data. 
2. Customer journeys are structured in a way that tries to extract customer data without providing value or establishing trust, resulting in below-average conversion rates.

Good design techniques can fix poor data quality input and low conversion rates. 

For instance, you can reduce errors and duplicate data entries by providing form prompts. We reduced duplicate Customer Relationship Management (CRM) entries for Connected Places Catapult by presenting users with in-form suggestions for their company based on their email addresses. This method improved data quality and reduced data cleansing time in the CRM - there were about 15 ways to spell JP Morgan according to the data.

Prospects will be more inclined to hand over their information if you give them something valuable in return. Build data collection around trust and reciprocation that drive relationships rather than single transactions.

Gating, for example, is a controversial technique not because it doesn’t work but because a lot of gated content is designed to extract emails, not add true value to the customer. The reality is that the content must be worth swapping your details for. We’ve gated high-quality content to great success, using it to collect 80% of data points in the CRM on one occasion.

Optimise for speed beyond Google Page Speed Test 

A fast website provides a responsive user experience, performs better in search engines, and emits less carbon, which can be documented in your company's carbon reduction plan. However, you need to be aware that optimising your website to pass a Google test will only address initial load time. 

The true responsiveness of your website is not defined on first load; it's how it responds when you log in, submit a form, or perform any action requiring data from a CRM.

CRMs are not designed for fast data transfer. In our experience, it can take up to six seconds to log into a website that’s pulling data from a CRM, which is a terrible user experience.

The solution is to build an intermediary customer data platform as part of an enterprise structure.

This platform caches crucial data, ensuring a fast response when users perform an action. It can handle multiple requests without slowing a website down and works in the background to pass data between the website and CRM.

I recommend testing your data-driven customer interactions to ensure they deliver the responsive experience you would expect as a customer.

Implement an enterprise structure with enhanced security and support

WordPress – or any generic Content Management System (CMS) – should only be used to manage content and not to run your entire enterprise website. 

If you have plug-ins for intensive data services like payments, registrations or bookings, your website is likely underperforming. If you’re storing customer data within your CMS, you have a large cyber-attack surface, and that data is potentially at risk.

We recommend that owners of business-critical websites implement an enterprise technology structure to create separation between the management of content and other processes. 

The two most vital things to separate are:

1. Customer data platform
2. Business Logic

As discussed earlier, the customer data platform is the buffer between your website and the CRM - or other third-party integrations - and improves the responsiveness of your website.

Business logic is anything that deals with data, such as login, subscription management or transactions. If there’s a WordPress plug-in, it can likely be moved onto a service independent from your CMS - we use Symfony.

The advantages of separating your business logic include:

Speed: Plug-ins no longer compete for bandwidth, and frameworks like Symfony process significantly more requests per second than WordPress.

Security: Customer data is separate from the CMS, which reduces your cyber-attack surface. Plus, each service has its own authentication and firewall.

Scalability: Services can be scaled independently from the CMS and each other without affecting performance.

The separation of concerns leads to a more responsive and reliable website with enterprise-level security and support.

Harness generative AI search to put expert knowledge at users’ fingertips

You can train your own AI model to search your expert knowledge whether it exists in a website, community, or forum - public or behind a paywall. We believe this is a game-changer for anyone who owns the top 5%-10% of knowledge in their specialism.

An AI expert can understand and interrogate everything you've ever created and then join up your published knowledge into one natural language answer. Marketers can leverage this tech to identify and fill content gaps, create evergreen subjects, drive awareness and growth, and build trust.

This approach is more than simply better site search and organisations that master it will become the information leaders for their specialism.

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Manage accessibility with a well-governed design system

A new website may meet accessibility standards on day one but can fall short over the longer term. A design system bakes accessibility in at the start and ensures continued compliance as pages are edited or added. In our experience, this is the most effective way of managing accessibility and why we develop design systems for almost every client we work with. 

Organisations are morally and legally obliged to make their website accessible to the 14.1 million disabled people in the UK and those temporarily disabled. “Making our products, services and communications accessible is the right thing to do. It also happens to make good business sense.” - Coop Accessibility Guide

Design systems are codified libraries of templates and assets bespoke to a website. Technical and non-technical users can access it to edit or add pages without starting from scratch, which reduces the risk that they will break conventions.

A design system will take care of technical accessibility at the start and ongoing, meaning you need only worry about producing well-structured content. Training, accessibility checkers like Webaim, and implementing a CMS that checks accessibility for you will also aid compliance.

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Move from responsive to intrinsic design for more efficient code and speed improvements 

Most websites use responsive or adaptive design, so layouts automatically change at specific breakpoints to fit different screens. Intrinsic design is an advanced technique where content flexes seamlessly from the smallest to the largest device without needing fixed breakpoints.

Designers create a single flexible layout that works on all devices rather than design separate layouts for every breakpoint. This method allows for more nuanced and fine-tuned adjustments and creates a more natural and adaptable design.

Crucially, more breakpoints mean more code. Therefore, a website built with intrinsic design requires fewer breakpoints and significantly less code. Websites built in this way will work on all devices now and in the future, including any that don’t fit traditional breakpoints, and are faster and higher performing.

We’re excited to be introducing this method into our design systems.

Create a fast editing experience for your team

Marketing teams are under constant pressure to deliver more in less time. But, in our experience, content management systems are not designed to meet the needs of the teams that use them. 

An off-the-shelf CMS may be suitable for daily users but more challenging for those who only use it occasionally. Using technology such as design systems and AI, you can significantly improve the editing experience for all users, reducing frustration and increasing efficiency. 

Example tools include:

• One-click, editable templates from your design system
• AI-generated fills that automatically adjust photos to fit available space

• Automated image alt tags 

  Knowledgebase with onboarding and help videos

   

The most seamless editing experience is designed around the team that will use it and supports their workflows. Understand your team’s pain points, workflow and skill level, then create the best possible editing experience for them.

These principles are key to creating a high-performing corporate website. In future posts, we’ll dive into each point in more detail, so follow us on social to stay informed.