Mind the Gap: building equitable digital experiences for Citizens and Customers

There's (still) a significant gap between citizen versus customer experiences – but maybe there doesn't need to be.

In the age of digital innovation, Personalisation has become a ubiquitous concept, transforming various aspects of our lives. From online shopping recommendations to tailored news feeds, where personalised experiences have become the norm. Yet, Personalisation is not limited to the private sector. Governments worldwide are recognising the potential of Personalisation to improve the delivery of public services and foster more robust citizen engagement. In this post, we will explore how Personalisation can enhance government services for citizens, leading to more effective and efficient public administration.

Why is there such a difference in the quality of the digital experience out there?

It may seem strange to think about – but it seems to me like there's a vast digital divide, especially when there are so many tools and proven techniques. 

As an experience designer, specialising in Sitecore, I naturally lean into the platform I know – and I see this level of fidelity/granularity of Personalisation can be achieved through Sitecore. But there are many other tools, tech and platforms that the Government can use to get there. 

How do we accelerate the delivery of personalised services while addressing concerns raised? What are the current misperceptions we hear?

 1. It's not needed

Citizens expect Personalisation to be seamlessly integrated into their online experience, as the influence of consumer-driven interactions shapes expectations. The reality is personalised experiences are essential for delivering a high-quality digital experience (DX).

 2. This is only for the private sector

While private enterprise has pioneered many of these concepts and technologies, it has also demonstrated the potential and reduced risks associated with similar initiatives. Private enterprise has led the way for Government to follow and capitalise on the opportunities presented. By drawing inspiration from the lessons learned in the private sector, the Government can embark on similar initiatives with greater confidence, driving innovation and progress.

Personalisation has the potential to enhance service delivery and serve a broader range of users - improving accessibility flexibility, including those in rural or remote locations, individuals with a disability, or another native language. Many of these scenarios can be enhanced by serving segmented content to meet the user where they are to improve user satisfaction.

3. Too costly, too complex 

Many organisations have seen significant 'cost to serve' reductions by moving to digital channels, enabling self-serve features or transacting online. Additionally, setting up Personalisation has never been easier, thanks to the growing availability of tools that will allow detailed insights and analytics. These tools are crucial in informing and enhancing an organisation's digital capabilities and maturity uplift. 

 4. Privacy and security concerns

Public perceptions about their data vary depending on the individual; for this reason, we should give people the choice to opt-in for personalised, data-driven services. A Deloitte Access Economics report on improved services – found reliability and data security are the third most identified benefits of public cloud. 

Well, where should Government start? 

These are three simple steps to get going…

1. Uncover the digital experiences users want with Customer Experience Management (CXM) and Customer Data Platform (CDP)

Customer Experience Management (CXM) is a holistic approach to understanding and improving customers' overall experience with your organisation. It involves analysing customer interactions across various touchpoints, like your website, mobile app, social media, and even customer support, to gain insights into their preferences, needs, and behaviours. By understanding these interactions, you can optimise digital experiences and tailor your communication strategies to deliver personalised content that is more relevant to each person.

CXM encompasses both marketing strategies and technology solutions. It involves developing a deep understanding of customer journeys and tactics to engage digital audiences at every touchpoint. This may include optimising the website design, enhancing the user experience by personalising content, and ensuring seamless interactions across channels.

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a software platform that collects, unifies, and analyses customer data from various sources to gain a comprehensive overview. It enables organisations to aggregate data from multiple touchpoints, such as website visits, social media interactions, email responses, and transaction history, into a centralised database.

Once the data is collated and unified, a CDP enables analysis and segmentation of their user base to identify high-value customers or specific target segments. Organisations can create targeted and personalised marketing strategies by understanding these behaviours and preferences. 

CDPs also facilitate activating this data, allowing organisations to deliver relevant messages, offers, and content to customers at the right time through various channels.

CXM and CDP help you understand customer interactions, provide personalised experiences, and optimise their marketing and communication efforts based on data-driven insights.

 Draw out the customer insights by developing hypotheses; you can test… 

 2. Start small and scale

Even simple Personalisation such as 'localisation' can provide significant digital uplift and the tactics to move away from a flat, one-size-fits-all experience into a segmented, deeply personalised one. A few that I'd consider might be:

• Recognising where a user is coming from 'remember my previous interactions'

• Geolocation – to provide specific, relevant, localised content 

• Provide relevant profiled content based on the topics relevant to the visitor 

3. Then, look to scale by experimenting and testing to see what's actually working in real-time. 

Developing 1:1 Personalisation in Citizen Experiences is one of the primary potential advantages of using platforms such as Sitecore in government services. It can provide the ability to deliver customised user experiences with significant 'quality of visit' uplift opportunities. By collecting and analysing interaction data, governments can gain valuable insights into preferences, needs, and behaviours. This information can then be used to tailor services and information to meet the specific requirements of citizens, thereby enhancing their overall experience.

Personalisation can potentially transform government services by placing citizens at the centre of service delivery. Through customised user experiences, joined-up services, targeted communication, and data-driven decision-making, governments can create a citizen-centric ecosystem that improves the overall quality of public services. 

While implementing Personalisation and multi-channel engagement throughout government digital services may be ambitious and require significant mindset changes to adopt new policies and ways of working – Personalisation is no longer a 'nice to have'; I believe it's a must-have – the only question is how to accelerate the transformation before the gap grows too wide. 

Sitecore User Group Canberra kicks off again in February 2024

 Join Greg Baxter, Leigh Gittoes, and myself Mike Marquette at SUGCAN, Canberra's only Sitecore user group. SUGCAN goes beyond the technical aspects, offering a unique blend of insights into Sitecore personalisation, optimisation, experimentation, data strategies, and digital design.

Our goal is to create an inclusive space for the Sitecore community in Canberra where enthusiasts, professionals, and learners can come together. SUGCAN is more than just a user group; it's a vibrant community where you can share your experiences, ask questions, and expand your network.

Expect engaging discussions on the latest trends and best practices in Sitecore, as well as practical insights into personalisation techniques, optimisation strategies, and the art and science of digital design. Whether you're a seasoned Sitecore professional or just starting your journey, SUGCAN is designed to cater to all levels of expertise.

We've again chosen the inviting atmosphere of Reload Bar in Canberra City as our venue, where you can connect with fellow Sitecore enthusiasts over drinks and snacks. SUGCAN is not just an event; it's an opportunity to build meaningful connections, gain valuable knowledge, and be a part of a thriving Sitecore community in the heart of Canberra.

Take advantage of this unique Sitecore experience. Join us at SUGCAN for an evening of learning, networking, and camaraderie. See you there!

Why you should use localisation as part of your personalisation stack?

Localisation or GeoIP based tactics are high on our list of must haves in your digital experience optimisation plan.

 As with any other personalisation tactic it is good practice to begin with the audience segments you want target and build hypothesis around their unique user journeys as they enter the site, engage with content, and eventually exit. We seek to define the behaviours that we are aiming to influence throughout their experience and emphasise the importance of developing a clear hypothesis that you want to prove or disprove through your localisation tactic.

 At a high level, our approach is designed around defining the: who, what, why, when and how the visitors are engaging with the site content, then overlay their geographical location, language, and any other relevant factors. We examine Google Analytics (GA), conduct desk research, stakeholder interviews and Sitecore interaction data to group common usage patterns, volume of traffic per location, and then co-design and prioritise specific tactics. It's critical to also set (and stick to) a test cadence to a create rigid operating rhythm so tests are always running for the same period to avoid skewing the data. A simple A/B test where we serve a percentage of the audience localised Vs control content will provide good definition of how well the approach is working. We craft these experiments as small, low risk and scalable then continuously monitor the performance of your localised content, tracking and testing for metrics like engagement, conversion rates, and user satisfaction.

Our approach emphasises data-driven decision making, collaboration, and a focus on the user experience.

By following these principles and continuously iterating based on the results - we can drive improved user engagement and conversion rates over time.

 Some of the localisation opportunities we like to explore as part of the above framework include:

• Adding localisation preferences functionality enabling the users to manually select their preferred language or region and opt in/out of personalisation.

• Integrating multi-lingual items into selected areas of the site such as news feeds, when the user meets certain interaction conditions.

• Localising navigation menu and structure to accommodate different languages and regions.

• Segment prioritisation by location to ensure that you focus efforts where they can have the most significant impact.

• Exploring device personalisation and where content tailored for mobile devices, or low bandwidth - such is in remote or regional areas.

In terms of exploring personalisation opportunities more broadly, we have a formal three-part process that focuses on co-designing your program as part of a bespoke DX blueprint. This aligns localisation and personalisation efforts to digital goals, then platform strategy to CX and brand objectives. We partner with you to regularly review data, experimentation outcomes, and develop tactics to drive continual improvement, and gain insights about audience interaction and quality of visit.

A key part of the process is defining digital segments, where to start and how to prioritise.

One of the framework we use is the PIE framework to uncover:

1.    Potential – how valuable is this segment?

2.    Importance – how many users sit within this segment?

3.    Ease – how easy is it to recognise this segment based on their interactions with the site?

With these foundations win place, some of the personalisation opportunities we would hope to explore with you could include:

• Pattern matching users that explore similar content - enabling serving of related topics.

• Implicitly personalising content to likely profile and intent.

• Retargeting digital segments to reinforce messages, calls to action.

• Serving content based on date, day of the month, time of day or season.

• Asset downloads - and prioritising these as a user preference.

• Goals converted - and moving users to next logical stage in their journey.

• Localised news or announcements.

• By Device - Desktop, Mobile, Tablet.

• Visit number (new vs. returning) - as a way of building digital dialogues.

• Matching regional imagery and content.

• Location (Geo-targeting or campaign/data match).

• Campaigns triggered – online referral from digital media (serve related content on arrival to the site).

• Pages visited (content relevancy for progressive profiling).

These potential personalisation tactics would be backed by our proven A/B/n testing and experimentation approach to ensure almost anything can be tested on your site, some of the common elements we would suggest including:

• Page layout, and location of key components

• Messages, information, CTAs

• Images and videos

• Copy size, fonts

• Buttons (size, shape, colour, font)

• Menus, navigation elements

We have built an extensive knowledge base on how to approach and implement personalisation, experimentation, and optimisation - a great deal of which is an evolution of Sitecore’s own Business Optimisation Service (SBOS) that we have invested significant time with. It’s a huge topic, and one we are extremely passionate about!

Sitecore User Group - SUGCAN 2023 wrap up

The inaugural Sitecore User Group Canberra (SUGCAN) was held on Thursday May 11th 2023 with a great turnout of around 40 Canberrans representing public and private sectors.

SUGCAN is a Canberra-based Sitecore user group that provides an open environment to share experiences, ask questions, and network, all while enjoying drinks and snacks at Reload Bar in Canberra City.

SUGCAN is more than just a tech-focused user group. It's a community of Sitecore enthusiasts who are passionate about exploring the full potential of the Sitecore platform. The group is open to anyone who wants to learn more about Sitecore, regardless of their level of expertise. The group meets to discuss various topics related to Sitecore, including personalisation, optimisation, experimentation, data, and digital design.

On the night we heard from Dawn Henry from Sitecore who presented their composable roadmap. Greg Baxter from Aceik on the Composable Customer complete with a demo, Leigh Gittoes from Annex a new Sitecore partner presented new approach to developing Sitecore components – and finally, Mike Marquette from Deloitte Digital spoke with Josh Burns from IP Australia on the ‘Great Digital Divide’ where they explored the delta between the provision of Government services Vs the digital maturity levels we experience as consumers, and how Sitecore can be implemented to generate uplift. 

The meetings are informal and provide an opportunity for members to share their experiences, ask questions, and learn from each other. One of the unique aspects of SUGCAN is its focus on creating a welcoming and inclusive environment.

The group is committed to providing a safe and respectful space for all members, regardless of their background or identity, and to new and aspiring Sitecorians. SUGCAN is also committed to fostering a sense of community among its members. The group also organises social events, presentations and networking events, to provide members with an opportunity to connect with each other outside of the regular meetings.

These events are a great way to build relationships and expand your professional network. If you're interested in joining SUGCAN, you can find more information on their website or social media pages. The group is always looking for new members who are passionate about Sitecore and want to learn more about the platform.

Whether you're a seasoned Sitecore expert or just starting out, SUGCAN is the perfect place to connect with like-minded professionals and explore the full potential of Sitecore.

Personalisation trends and considerations for enterprise context marketing

We are often asked what are some of the current trends and best practices for B2B sites?

Codehouse globally has a strong B2B customer register, with close to 60% of our projects addressing the B2B segment – our expertise crosses both B2B and B2C segments, often within the same project.

We know that B2B visitors enjoy first-class digital experiences when they are not undertaking their daily job roles, as they digitally navigate almost every part of daily life.  In their “civilian life” they know very well how frictionless great digital experiences are – and increasingly expect that these same capabilities are used by their commercial partners to assist with undertaking business tasks from discovery through to service and commercial outcome fulfilment. 

Unfortunately for many, the experience of doing business with corporates is very much sub-par when compared to the innovation delivered in the B2C world. This disparity cannot continue – brands cannot expect B2B users to struggle with poor digital experiences, this second-tier outcome increasingly damages brand, introduces operational friction and frustration with commercial undertaking fulfilment.

It’s no surprise that the same innovations that have revolutionised the B2C world are now considered mandatory in the B2B arena, these include:

Hyper Personalisation

The B2B segment is perfect for localisation and personalisation since all B2B users’ behavioural details are explicit, rather than the more guesswork-based implicit personalisation we typically see in the B2C world. The explicit customer data is delivered and collated via typical B2B activities, including completion of forms, digital property registration, log-in activities, and the associated platform “User Profile” means that personalisation is easier to implement, more immediately meaningful and very much more accurate. This key customer data is the perfect insight repository from which to craft frictionless, assistive, and experience-rich interactions that make life easier for your valuable business partners.

This seamless business experience ultimately enhances your brand and speaks to delivering value to your partner, supplier, and prospect partner ecosystem.

B2B personalisation tactics frequently include:

• Frictionless, guided and predictively assisted business partner onboarding

• Automation of key account notifications

• Automation and delivery of targeted commercial notifications

• One stop login to business platforms

• Personalised messaging on public and private business focused digital properties.

• Personalised access to resources, pricing, social proof, testimonials, case studies, product or service proof-points, methodologies, and relationship contact details to simplify asset discovery, service delivery and business task completion.

• Predictive business task assistance based on known user data points.

Auto-personalisation leverages AI and Machine Learning to remove manual, rules-based personalisation – utilising pattern matching, dynamic segmentation, and existing business rules to deliver a superior B2B experience.

A Cookie-Less Experience

Many agencies and industry analysts suggest we are rapidly moving towards a “cookie-less” digital environment. A cookie-less digital experience refers to online interactions that do not utilise cookies to track user behaviour, preferences, or identity. In a cookie-less experience, other methods must be employed to personalise content and track user engagement.

Without cookies, websites rely more on first-party data provided directly by the users, such as information entered into forms, interactive tools or chosen preferences within a site.

This becomes central to a B2B personalisation and localisation strategy, given B2B’s increased requirements around account and data aggregation and privacy as the digital world moves towards cookie-less experiences that still aim to be engaging and user-friendly while respecting users' privacy preferences.

Chatbots, Enterprise Virtual Assistants and AI powered search

Search has been undertaken using the same process “forever” – users type in key terms and hope that the results are meaningful and accurate – unfortunately, we all know that search is a very common pain point and that users struggle to find the content, processes, contacts, and business content they need.

Generative AI and Enterprise Virtual Assistants are redefining how search works, without question. Search is increasingly conversational, with Generative AI specifically trained on corporate information resources able to anticipate user requests, interact with users in real time with significantly more helpful outcomes and deliver meaningful assistance to search queries.

All in a two-way conversational model, that learns about user preferences, profiles, and user needs in real time, and then remembers those data points for future interactions. Inevitably, business will introduce Generative AI based chatbots for real-time B2B customer support as a first line of response – to not do so is to ignore the single greatest digital innovation in history. This technology is already redefining how we search, and what we expect a search experience to deliver.

Introducing this technology and considering even newer advances like AI powered voice search, is a real opportunity to get ahead of the curve, right now.

Content localisation

Content localisation involves adapting content to suit the cultural, linguistic, and other localised needs of specific markets or regions. This process extends beyond translation, encompassing everything from language nuances and idioms to cultural norms and local regulations. Localisation plays a key role in delivering a relevant, business-centric, and culturally sensitive digital experience. 

Interactive, AI driven ABM (Account Based Marketing)

Understanding who is on your site, why and whether they are part of an account-based bid team is becoming easier to implement.  By integrating AI into ABM, businesses can collect and process data from various sources, including CRM systems, social media, website interactions, and online customer portal behaviour.

This data is then used to create a comprehensive profile of each target account, revealing valuable insights about their preferences, pain points, and behaviours. Introducing micro-transaction-based tools like solution selectors, calculators, self-managed profiling, and surveys can drive customer intelligence increases and provide additional datapoints for analysing B2B visitor behaviour, lead score and value of visit.

This would be a powerful use of Sitecore’s Customer Data Platform, which aggregates customer data from multiple sources and delivers insights around uplift opportunities.

Smart forms, frictionless onboarding, and interactive tools

Optimised forms and personalised, interactive tools are a powerful way to simplify doing business with you – from onboarding through to relationship management, interactive and dynamic electronic forms and tools that adapt to user input, offer clear advantages in terms of digital experience, including personalisation, predictive content and the simplification of business tasks – they also contribute valuable data-points for ongoing optimisation.

This means a better, seamless digital experience for your business partners, and an abundance of customer intelligence for ongoing optimisation and digital experience uplift.

Tech sustainability

 As organisations actively pursue their net zero targets, forward-thinking B2B companies are increasingly looking to understand and minimise the carbon emissions impact of their technology and digital activities.

This applies to both the direct impact of the organisation’s digital activities but also the Scope 3 emissions generated in their digital supply chains. Reviewing hosting practices, introducing sustainable website design practices, optimising digital marketing campaigns to reduce wastage and even auditing website tagging practices are all examples of proactive approaches to improving tech sustainability for both B2C and B2B organisations.

There are dozens of ways that B2B experiences can be optimised – we focused above on the ones we believe will have an impact through a “short fuse – big bang” lens. By that we mean those things we can deliver that will have an immediate and visible impact on digital experience and ultimately on business conversion increases.

Other opportunities include marketing data-lake implementation, social media integration, video marketing and influencer activities, social proof and thought-leadership, content marketing, SEO activities, accessibility and data aggregation and security.

Thinking about personalisation and experience optimisation trends in B2C

In the ever-evolving digital environment, B2B websites stand to gain substantial insights from the practices and strategies implemented by B2C platforms. B2C websites have long excelled in creating user experiences that are intuitive, engaging, and highly personalised. By adopting similar approaches, B2B websites can significantly enhance the user journey and customer experience, making it easier for business customers and stakeholders to find and engage with the content, products, or services they need.

This becomes even more imperative as a younger, digitally savvy, population enters new life stages and increasingly interact with B2B sites as part of their daily lives. Used to the advanced B2C-level digital experiences common in eCommerce and online retail, they expect a smooth, engaging, and personalised experience in all their digital interactions. 

Equally, the Covid 19 pandemic, associated lockdowns, and resulting increased reliance on eCommerce, online shopping and digital services generally, also raised the level of digital sophistication across the general population, exposing more and more people to what a good digital experience should look and feel like. Personalisation is a key B2C feature providing opportunities to B2B sites to offer contemporary digital experiences.

Other key inspirations from B2C include:

Mobile first (desktop worst)

Long a staple in the B2C world, websites that are properly optimised for mobile are now becoming essential for B2B, simply because of the growing number of people who carry out most of their digital activities on their mobile devices.

Content Marketing

The B2C sector has set a high bar for content marketing and communication, using compelling storytelling and high-quality content to engage customers. B2B websites can adopt these content strategies to demystify their offerings and communicate complex products and services in a more relatable way. The adoption of B2C content strategies can help B2B companies to articulate their value proposition better, foster trust, educate customers, enhance the overall brand experience and improve customer experience.

Social Proof

B2C sites often showcase user-generated content and mentions in the media, as well as integrating well with social media platforms. This helps a company create a sense of connectedness with their target audiences.

Frictionless Navigation

User-friendly navigation, commonly seen in B2C sites, should be essential for B2B website. Clear menus, effective search functionality, and intuitive site structure can help users find what they're looking for quickly and also support personalisation initiatives. 

Vibrant and Modern Experience-First Design

B2C websites often use contemporary designs, vibrant colours, and high-quality images. Adopting a modern aesthetic at the B2B to appear more inviting and up to date. Importantly, experience design is not just about a pretty face – its about discoverability, ease of use and using technology to surface relevant content to diver stakeholders and visitors.

Privacy and data protection, front and centre

Consumer and business awareness of online data protection and privacy is growing rapidly, driven by a rising number of data breaches. This heightened awareness has placed greater pressure on organizations to meet not only regulatory requirements but also community expectations in terms of safeguarding personal data.

As a result, integrating privacy by design and building consumer trust in data collection is becoming a potential competitive advantage.

This shift has noteworthy implications for website design, analytics, and personalisation, with B2C websites now adopting more transparent and responsible practices, openly disclosing the collection of personal information and its intended use, offering users the choice to opt in or opt out of data collection, and emphasising the secure storage and handling of personal data.

The great digital divide.

Working in digital, I still have a passion for creating better and better solutions that hopefully result in making life a little easier. However, there’s something that’s puzzled me for quite a while. I mean why is there such a great digital divide, between the digital experiences we enjoy as consumers, compared to the citizen experience. After all there are so many things we need from government beyond just paying for your car registration, rates or a speeding fine n- there’s actually so much more to it, and government has to design, build and optimise their services for billions of users, it’s just mind boggling.

The thing is, government is a logical, and necessary source of truth for so many things, I’m talking about finding a school, or finding career information, emergency service and notifications such as when floods or bushfires occur, even access to information about the law, or support when times are beyond tough.

This year I signed up for the new MyGov, got a digital licence, and transacted for things like registration renewal and paying rates online - nothing eat shattering but it’s a start. All these services work pretty well, and the progression over the last 10 years has been great - there’s just so much more to do.

Citizens expect that government services can be provided to them in the same way that they enjoy in their personal lives such as banking and entertainment. I mean how do we move between - all the convenience of being a Digital Customer to Digital Citizen - and back again?

It goes way beyond information, think about all those transactions, rights and obligations, registrations, taxes and notification. And what about public health updates: Pandemics, Natural disasters, Floods, Storms and…Bushfires.

The NSW Fire Service has a pretty cool live bushfire map that shows the status of the fires in different areas and seems to work well - as I found out. From September 2019 to March 2020, fires blazed in south east Australia (I remember, because I was there) large areas of forest burnt out of control for weeks before easing off - in late December. The problem was my House was less than 20 kilometres of being completely wiped out - it wasn’t looking good. Having forewarning though, and being empowered with the live data made a difference. My point is, access to relevant, high quality digital services - could easily save your life.

Did you know the average Australian still spends one working day every year waiting in queues or completing Government transactions via traditional channels?

On a global scale the demands for personalization - are ever increasing. Singapore’s use of AI, Argentina’s Digital Government plans, and Canada - are a few notable examples. In this context Australia is actually performing ok – with use of digital channels increasing and Federal Government programs - like myGov that is basically designed to join up different services and provide a source of truth based on your myGovID.

1. The question is - how to accelerate all this transformation. I’ve noticed from my time working with our government clients there tend to be a few blockers:

2. It’s just not needed. Yet Citizens expect personalisation as an integral part of their online experience.

3. It’s costly and complex. Personalisation and DXP technologies in general have a low barrier to entry and it’s very easy to get started.

4. Privacy and security perceptions - There are usually security benefits - with many of Sitecore’s products meeting IRAP standards and a growing number of site of all kinds utilising public cloud it’s hard to deny,

5. Only for enterprise (marketing). Personalisation is all about equitable high quality service delivery, and while marketing and commerce are a part of this - most of the work we do focusses on enhancing user experience and service delivery.

The good news is, I’m not alone in in my quest. In fact 3 out of 4 Australians - say they would be equally, or more likely to use government websites if they were personalised. What types of personalization? Basically: Remember my previous interactions, and Geolocation to provide specific, relevant content.

Through researching all this….I had one big realization. As citizens we don’t really care…which department provides the service – we just want to find what we need. One idea that’s been discussed - is to build personalized digital experiences around you – the user. So that instead of navigating a maze of sites you could simply - choose the Life Event you’re experiencing - and find what you need, in that context. Think: education, getting married, buying a home, having kids, retiring, or seeking financial assistance

I mean what if we really decided to ‘wrap’ digital services around the citizen – not necessarily the Departments that provide them. One of my Canberra peers – actually said to me t’s like you want a ‘Department of Me I thought – now, that - kinda works, I like it! Perfect for a personalization fanatic.

But what platforms and approaches would we need to explore ideas like this? How could we ensure we build the right thing, in the right ways – and in a reasonable timeframe?

Tools such as Sitecore's CDP/Personalize have such an important role to play. And it’s so easy to get started with simple testing and experimentation.

The experimentation mindset is centered on learning. It means that even experiments that don’t win are valuable lessons that give you data to inform your next move. And these insights fuel enhancements and answers to better and bigger questions.

In the end, It’s so tempting to be get distracted by creative tech, VR, AI, and the Metaverse
But I’m talking about the practical more than the progressive. No longer being asked for unnecessary information, filling out offline forms or PDFs, and maybe, archiving all those confusing old sites, and apps past their used by date.

Welcome to the ‘Department of Me’. You only need to update your details once for it to go across all services, we will remember what you need, content is personalised and in context and - you’ll have - secure platforms with modern privacy protection.

And perhaps the best part - you’ll get an entire day back per year do do what you like!

Acknowledgements:

Blueprint-for-enhanced-citizen-experiences – Deloitte
Rethinking the digital dividend – Deloitte
Embracing meaningful personalization – Deloite Digital
Federal Path to Personalization - Sitecore

Digital experience drivers.

Digital Experience Platforms including Sitecore depend on forward thinking. That’s why creating a blueprint or roadmap is the most critical artefact to deliver the return on investment that your organization is hoping for. There are so many elements that go into building your DXP program – here are just some that I thought of. I reckon they range from the Technical, to the Human, the Approach, Testing and Foundation elements. The equation is simple – the more of them you incorporate - the better your DXP will become.

Now, all these elements would be quite a lot to go through in just one post. So I’ve chosen just 4 that I believe are important to delivering accelerated value:

1. Human centred design

2. Engagement

3. Platforms

4. Experimentation

Human Centred Design

Human centred design or HCD is critical to developing better, more inclusive services. It basically puts the user in the centre of the design process, and uses tools like journey mapping, personas and various research methodologies to work out how to enhance the user experience. Understanding common frustrations among users is the first important step.

Engagement

Start by aligning your organization’s strategic and marketing objectives to digital interaction goals and the Engagement Value Scale. According to Econsultancy’s 2018 Optimization Report, this is a defining characteristic of businesses with high-performing DX teams. Interestingly, there are some strong correlations between digital government progress - and citizen’s perceptions of effectiveness. Engagement scoring can be a great qualitative measure - and probably one of the most important focus area. Basically, higher scores usually mean happier users.

Platforms

Full disclosure – I’ve used XP for so long - and I still love it. I wanted to give a shoutout to Rodrigo Peplau for creating a video called CDP & Personalize for Sitecore XP fanatics. Basically helping those of us - that are into strategy and personalisation - navigate the new terminology of 2022.

There are quite a lot of Government customers on XP (for obvious reasons). But the new Sitecore platforms are now generating a lot of interest - we’re already participating in a number of POCs for one thing. Especially as they potentially move towards IRAP certification.

Whatever your mix of elements - it’s a great idea to incorporate as many as possible. It means you will be able to focus on getting the most out of your digital experience platform and delivering measurable uplift in visitor experience.

Announcing Canberra’s first Sitecore User Group. SugCan.

Canberra is a fairly unique place in the Sitecore world. With a growing base of government departments adopting the platforms, there’s a need to build community and start sharing the knowledge a lot of us have gained from years of implementing Sitecore across all sorts of different  environments and verticals.

The group has been started by Mike Marquette and Greg Baxter with support from both of the brand we work for Deloitte Digital and Aceik respectively. Our aim is to provide an informative, engaging and fun resource for the local Sitecore community with a balanced format covering: case studies, technical aspects and strategy, with a range of speakers from users and developers in government, and Sitecore product gurus themselves.

The soft launch is in early December 2022 in Canberra, with the first organised gathering on the 15th January 2023 with around 25 attendees catered for.

Speaking at my first SUG-CON 2022.

November this year I was lucky enough to be invited to speak at SUG-CON Melbourne. It’s been a long time coming and felt more than a little overdue - having worked on Sitecore for about 7 years already. With more than a few builds under my belt client side, and with smaller Sitecore Partners, and now one of the largest at Deloitte Digital - I still felt like an imposter. All these Sitecorians with incredible technical prowess can be a bit intimidating.

Meeting a lot  people including Tamas Varga, and Greg Baxter face to face for the first time was a blast, and the Sitecore user group really is as friendly and open as people say. If you haven’t heard of it the Sitecore community has a user group conference that gets the Sitecore community together and enable a heap of knowledge sharing, and the chance to get re-invigorated with the latest tools, products and ideas. This years Melbourne event was held at the stunning Intercontinental hotel in Melbourne, and the sessions were spread across two rooms - one for the techies, and a second for all of us strategy and marketing folk, perfect! I went to as many sessions as humanly possibly, mixing it up across the two genres and getting a lot of insights from each.

When it came to give my talk I had the usual jitters, until some one stopped me on the way to the stage and said “just be nervous enough to tell your story and no more - you’ll crush it!” I thought that was a pretty good way to think about public speaking and it genuinely helped me frame my thoughts.

By the way my session was call Accelerated Personalisation - where I looked at the seemingly huge divide between the digital services we use everyday as consumers - and how different our digital experience is as Citizens using government services. I’ll be putting together a post on this talk and some of the interesting feedback I’ve gathered since.

I can fully recommend Sugcon - wherever you are in your Sitecore journey, anywhere in the world. The community is awesome, full of knowledge and it’s one of the best ways to get involved, build your network and new friends. See you next year.

So cool to speak for the first time at Sugcon, it won’t be the last.

How you can still use cookies as part of your tracking plan.

With restrictions tightening on the use of cookies as the main way of known person marketing - it’s interesting to consider the role of platforms such as Sitecore CDP/Personalize and a shift to first party data as the got to build that elusive single view of the customer.

The cookie was used for years as a way to collect first and third party data about visitor behaviour. There were various methods, however they would generally remain in the browser until the owner cleared them. Recent changes in user preferences and regulations have started to transform the way cookies are used and the dat they contain. Many users block cookies or opt out - often due to privacy concerns.

There are so many reasons to consider implementing Sitecore CDP/Personalize - especially for it’s cross channel capabilities.

Moreover, embracing first party data is better from a privacy perspective, and even better the visitor actually gets something in return through hyper-personalised experiences and richer profiling. As a data storage platform you can connect data across sources, then serve targeted experiences to almost any channel or touchpoint. Marketers can leverage user profiles for segmentation and targeting, decision models and personalisation in near real time.

Unpacking personalisation.

There’s no more personal trait than empathy, actually being able to sense and feel what another person is experiencing. It’s known as one of the most common traits in designers as well, and for good reason. When digital experiences are made to kind of, wrap around the user - it’s no less than magic - although in my experience, achieving this is really hard to do, and takes a lot of work not just building strategy and tactics, but having the right people around you - with the passion of building fantastic customer experience. These people keep the momentum up, scaling the successful approaches, and learning from the many that fail. It’s always a long and fascinating journey.

Speaking of journeys, there’s probably nor better place to start, when planing your personalisation, than creating a baseline understanding of the ways your users navigate the experience you have designed. In fact I reckon success depends on it.

So how do we get going in terms of building a framework? One place to start is getting some baselines defined where we can get some understanding of the current state of the site, while looking for traffic patterns, impact pages, decision points, and landing environments. These are all good places to start brainstorming around personalisation tactics, leaving targeted content and information pages to do the heavy lifting around profiling and segmentation.

Above and beyond all this, building an understanding of the user’s journey is one of the most important artefacts. If you look at it truly end to end, from acquisition to engagement and exit it’s a lot easier to find the gaps, and see the opportunities. Even more importantly, where the best areas might be to start measuring. Where, and what channels is our traffic coming from, and what are those visitors looking at on-site, how many pages viewed and quality of visit will vary. This is for sure one of the best metrics to examine to cover quick wins. Double down on what’s working, and unpack what’s not - and you’ll be on the way to building great digital experience.

Why Sitecore composable is the future…or is it?

It’s a whole new composable world - and that’s incredibly awesome. But what about all that time some of us have invested building and working with older XP implementations? Of course the majority of Sitecore users are probably still on XM or XP builds, and may well be for some time. Some even stay that XP is to remain the centrepiece in the Sitecore eco-system - basically the figurehead product. And while many will differ from this opinion the fact is there is still so much work to be done in the monolithic space.

I still love Sitecore XP - there I said it… Yet there are so many reasons to embrace composable offerings and SaaS technology: not the least of these reasons is speed, scalability, security, ease of deployments and so much less to worry about in terms of upgrades.

It’s so interesting to think about how locked in we were on XP/XM to Sitecore entities. I mean the personalisation, testing, and optimisation tactics implemented were generally only able to be used on the Sitecore property. But with Sitecore CDP for example, it opens up all channels, and basically any site in out eco-system. Sitecore CDP is about consolidating all your different data points you have across channels, and taking the relevant information you need, when you want to engage with customer segments across channels. And understand how they react with your entities.

That’s where personalisation and testing comes in. It enables you to optimise every experience across every channels. It’s not about just web only.  We can get agnostic about the end channel, and be in the moment – based on the data available and serving the most relevant content or next best action.

Then there’s XM cloud, which is basically the culmination of 20 years of development, Saas first, and focussed on speed of delivery. It’s all such a massive evolution, and makes me consider the lifecycles of the digital products we create and how we might be able to future proof them with the flexibility and power these new products provide. In the end it’s about readiness to deliver those customer experiences across channels and adopt new and more creative approaches to strategy. The options are virtually endless.