TechGuilds’ Sitecore Application Managed Services Drive Digital Success
Amica Senior Lifestyles modernize their website, achieve WCAG 2.0 AA compliance, decrease abandonment by 3.6% and increase conversion by 75%.
An ambitious vision
Amica Senior Lifestyles is Canada’s leading provider of premium, private-pay retirement residences, with more than 30 locations in the finest neighborhoods across Ontario, British Colombia, and Alberta. Since 1996, their mission has been to revolutionize aging and help seniors continue living on their terms in an elegant setting, complete with outstanding dining, amenities, activities, as well as care and safety measures. To deliver on that vision, Amica had to overcome a number of challenges:
- An ambitious business goal of achieving 93% occupancy rate, with 25% move-ins coming from digital channels.
- A legacy technology stack that was unstable and expensive to maintain, had inflexible components and templates, lacked accurate data, had a low web accessibility rating, and low site performance.
- A low conversion rate and high abandonment rate in booking tours, which was the primary form of lead generation.
How we helped bring the vision to life
To overcome these challenges, Amica Senior Lifestyles engaged with TechGuilds on a Sitecore application managed services model: TechGuilds Super Care™. The TechGuilds team worked closely with the Amica team to familiarize themselves with the current state, existing solution, and Amica's needs, goals, and processes. Soon after, the team started prioritizing and performing tasks that drive value, including:
- Stabilizing the technology and preventing recurring outages as a stopgap measure while further investigation is done.
- Performing a complete technical audit to identify gaps and issues, and producing a report of findings and recommendations which includes a backlog prioritized by business impact: accessibility, performance, and lack of control over the website due to poor implementation.
- Reviewing data and analytics and forming an understanding of Amica’s target audience and personas (seniors and adult children) and how they interact with the website and identified areas of potential improvement.
- Improving the experience of lead generation by identifying where users were dropping out, reducing friction by applying UX best practices (single column layout, clear labels, removing fields that are unnecessary, etc.), and implementing the solution using Sitecore Forms after extending it to support the headless architecture. The solution included the ability to add dynamic custom fields to the forms as well as an integration with Eloqua in real-time to get leads enrolled into marketing automation campaigns. It also introduced personalization based on using geo-location to suggest residences that are closer to the user.
- Modernizing the tech stack, adopting a composable architecture, and re-platforming to Sitecore Headless. This empowered Amica’s digital team to build a best-of-breed solution, manage their web presence efficiently, reach SEO and accessibility targets, achieve quick time to value, and drive TCO down.
Results: A modern web presence that drives value
The engagement produced exceptional results for Amica Senior Lifestyles, including:
- Modernizing the website, adopting a composable architecture, and re-platforming to Sitecore Headless successfully.
- Putting the power back in the hands of Amica’s team.
- Increasing performance score from C 73% to A 93% (GTmetrix score) as of August 2021.
- Achieving WCAG 2.0 Level AA compliance on all lead generation form pages.
- Increasing engagement, which led to more qualified leads from digital channels. Conversion rate increased by 75%, and the abandonment rate decreased by 3.6% after the launch of the new forms compared to the previous period.
TechGuilds Super Care™is a composable approach to Sitecore application managed services. It’s a package of Sitecore services that includes everything you need and nothing you don’t. The package is customizable and can include anything from technical solution audit, DX strategy and design, ongoing development and enhancement, 24/7 SLA Sitecore support, modernizing to a composable and headless architecture, and Sitecore training.