For over two decades, Google has been the dominant force in search, shaping the way users access information online. But recent data and a declining share price indicates Google’s once-unquestioned supremacy is beginning to show cracks.
As of January 2025, Google’s market share had remained under 90% for four consecutive months, sitting at 89.78%. This decline marks a significant shift, as prior to October 2024, the last time Google’s market share dipped below 90% was in March 2015. Meanwhile Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has seen its stock price fall 20% (as of March 11, 2025) following a disappointing earnings report and volatility in the US stock market.
While Google remains the dominant player, growing competition from other search engines, AI-driven search alternatives, increased scrutiny over search result quality, and evolving user behaviour all raise serious questions about the company’s long-term future. SEOs, digital marketing professionals and businesses must take note of these shifts and prepare for a changing landscape.
Google’s Declining Market Share: Key Trends
Google’s market share had been above 90% since 2015, but the recent downturn suggests a gradual erosion of dominance. October 2024 marked the lowest point in over a decade (89.34%), highlighting a downward trajectory that coincides with competitors like Bing and Yandex making small but notable gains:
- In October 2024, Bing recorded its second-highest market share ever (4.16%), the highest since 2011.
- Yandex reached a record-high market share of 2.78% in the same month.
- This decline in Google’s market share does not account for AI-based search alternatives, meaning the real shift could be even more pronounced.
- Whilst Google is still dominant and search competitors still pale in comparison, the direction of the trend is noteworthy and something SEOs and businesses should closely monitor.
A recent study of UK and US users found 27% now prefer AI chatbots like ChatGPT over traditional search engines. AI-driven search alternatives are altering user behaviour by providing direct answers without the need for traditional search engine result pages as tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity AI, powered by Large Language Models (LLMs), deliver instant, research-driven responses, reducing reliance on Google for informational queries.
This shift to LLMs and AI platforms is underlined by data showing:
- 57% of respondents use AI daily.
- 49% see AI and traditional search engines as interchangeable.
- 67% believe AI will replace traditional search within three years.
In response, Google has started integrating AI into its search experience via the Google Search Generative Experience (SGE), or AI Overviews.
However, reaction to Google’s jump into AI has been mixed, with concerns over bias, accuracy, and its role in increasing zero-click searches, leading to outcry from the SEO world and from companies harmed. Education platform Chegg is suing Google regarding Google’s AI Overviews, alleging AI-generated content is infringing on their educational material. There are numerous examples of AI Overviews providing users with incorrect information, including suggesting users can eat rocks, stick cheese to pizza with glue, and misattributing awards to different musicians, including claiming US indie musician MJ Lenderman has won 14 Grammys, when the true number is zero, which corresponds with a recent Vox Media survey found that 42% of respondents believe Google Search is becoming less useful. While Google’s lead remains substantial, the shift suggests that users are actively exploring alternatives—not just AI tools, but competing search engines as well.
Anecdotal evidence from popular forums like Reddit suggests growing dissatisfaction with Google’s search results. Users have expressed frustration over declining result quality, increased ad placements, and ineffective AI-generated search responses:
- “Does Google realize they already had a really good search engine? The AI doesn’t work. It sucks.” (5.6k upvotes)
- “It’s shaping up to fit in with the shockingly poor Google Search results that are loaded with sponsored garbage.” (2.3k upvotes)
- “Even when you get to the first results, they are usually useless articles, AI-generated content, or sales pitches.” (2.3k upvotes)
But for now, this criticism is not slowing Google down. Recent data claims AI Overviews now appear in 42% of Google search results, and last week Google announced AI Mode, search results pages which now only exclusively show AI-generated results.
The Search Landscape has vastly changed in a short amount of time, with SEO professionals and businesses reliant on Search left no choice but to adapt to these changes. From our recap of BrightonSEO back in October 2024, we reported that when an AI Overview appears in a Google search, organic click-through rates (CTR) drop by 70%. By January 2025, a new study has revealed this estimated CTR decline to have reached 84%.
SEO isn’t dead or dying, but is evolving at a faster pace than we’ve become accustomed to. Declining CTRs due to more AI Overviews means data optimisation is more important than ever, as is having the knowledge and resources to capitalise when opportunities arise.
This evolving search landscape presents both challenges and opportunities for SEO and digital marketing. With AI reshaping user behaviour, businesses must consider multi-platform strategies and optimise for AI-driven search as well as traditional search engines. SEO remains essential, but the rise of AI-driven platforms underscores the importance of conversion optimisation and data analysis. Businesses need to make the most of their traffic, and the utilisation of tools like Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Looker Studio for tracking user behaviour and refining marketing strategies has never been more important.
Google’s Stock Price Downturn After February’s Earnings
At the time of writing, Google’s parent company Alphabet has seen its stock fall by 20% since its most recent earnings report. Revenue growth in key sectors, including cloud computing, fell short of expectations which fuelled investor concerns as Wall Street firms cut Alphabet’s price target, citing increased competition and AI disruption. This includes Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Citi. Analysts have explained this is due to tougher year-on-year comparisons in search revenue and anticipated increases in expenditures, such as higher spend on AI to adapt to the changing market.
Google remains the dominant player in search, but its supremacy is being tested as alternative search engines, privacy-focused platforms, and AI tools gain traction. The company is heavily investing in AI and cloud services to counteract market shifts, including plans to increase capital expenditures with $75 billion earmarked for AI development and expansion. Google has also invested $3 billion into Anthrophic, and have been boosted by the Department of Justice recently deciding not to proceed with a plan that would’ve required Alphabet to sell its stakes in AI firms.
Google is heavily investing in AI and cloud computing to maintain its competitive edge, but its cloud division’s underperformance and search revenue expectations raise questions for Wall Street, investors, SEOs and businesses about its long-term dominance. SEOs and businesses must prepare for a future where Google is no longer the sole gateway to online visibility.
Of course, there’s wider geo-political uncertainty and volatility in the stock markets stemming from the policies of the Trump administration. But this sort of stock downturn and decline in market share isn’t a surprise to many within the SEO community. SEOs and businesses crave consistency and stability, and the flurry of sweeping changes from Google over the past two years has provided anything but.
So what does the future hold?
Google’s declining market share reflects a broader shift in how users seek information. While AI-powered search tools and alternative search engines continue to grow, SEO remains crucial. The past year has seen the term Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) coined, focusing on optimising content for discoverability by LLMs. For marketers and businesses, this marks a wider shift, from not just ranking well in search results, but adapting to the evolution of user behaviour as LLMs continue to gain precedence.
Companies must adapt by:
- Tracking and analysing search trends across platforms.
- Optimising for both traditional search and AI-driven search tools.
- Enhancing conversion funnels to capitalise on the traffic they do receive.
The search landscape is changing, and businesses that evolve alongside it will be best positioned for success. At SoBold, we can help you navigate these shifts and develop a strategy that keeps you ahead in an AI-driven digital world.
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- Your target audience now has a shorter attention span, and less patience when browsing websites and services online.
- Your target audience also has more choice of options than ever before when choosing who to buy from.
- Boost SEO and brand awareness
- Improve audience engagement
- Reduce bounce rates
- Increase conversions
- Drive more sales through your website
- Accelerate business growth
- Improve customer retention and loyalty
- Gain competitive advantages.
- Read our comparison between Sitecore and WordPress here.
- Read our comparison between Drupal and WordPress here.
- A bespoke client-facing website that represents your brand and provides direct access to your products or services
- An internal web portal, either for training employees or for networking and sharing of information
- A bespoke intelligence platform with powerful data and analytics capabilities
- A new content management system (CMS) that can provide greater flexibility and scalability for a portfolio of multiple sites
- A unique tool to transform inefficient manual processes into a simple digital platform
- A bespoke website that integrates directly with a wide range of other back-end tools and technology, such as your CRM system.
- Experience working with businesses in the healthcare sector
- A strong portfolio of successful bespoke development projects
- The expertise to guide you and help you make the best decisions for your project
- Certifications and accreditations
- Compliance with healthcare sector regulations
- Security and data protection built into the core of your project
- Secure hosting supported by back-up, disaster recovery, and risk mitigation plans
- Ongoing support services to maintain, update, and optimise your site
- Additional advisory services to help you gain as much value from your technology as possible.
- Boosting engagement with customers, with an outstanding UX and personalised services
- Increasing customer retention and loyalty
- Enabling real-time interactions with data and greater analytics capabilities
- Higher adoption rates of internal systems and improved business performance
- Reducing costs by streamlining inefficient processes and removing outdated technology
- Strengthening your corporate network with enterprise-grade security
- Achieving competitive advantages in a highly competitive market.
Digital Business
5 January, 2023
WordPress vs Sitecore – Comparing Both Content Management Systems
Large businesses and enterprises in need of a content management system (CMS) today are spoilt for choice, because there are plenty of excellent platforms available. From WordPress to Sitecore to Drupal, the technology currently on offer is highly intelligent and intuitive.
But so much choice can make the task of finding the right CMS for your own specific business complicated and time-consuming.
Selecting a CMS is an important decision that requires a lot of research, followed by careful evaluation of all the various options. Of course, those processes can be very time-consuming. When you’re already extremely busy juggling dozens of other priorities, it’s challenging to give this the attention and effort it deserves.
To solve that challenge, we’ve done the bulk of the hard work for you. In a new series of articles, we’ll provide you with direct, objective comparisons between some of the leading options for CMSs, helping you relieve the headache of researching and evaluating them yourself.
In the first article of this series, we’ll be looking at the comparison between Sitecore and WordPress.
How Does the Security Compare for Both Platforms?
As we face ever-increasing concerns with cyber security, data protection, and various other digital challenges, finding a platform with robust security should be a top priority.
Sitecore Security
Sitecore has a reputation of being the leading CMS for large businesses, guaranteeing an enterprise-grade experience that includes a high level of security.
Sitecore’s security is also strengthened by the vast range of in-built features within the platform, which we’ll discuss in more detail later. There’s no need to purchase more third-party software or plug-ins to enhance its functionality, which means you won’t be creating any additional vulnerabilities or risks. The platform also receives frequent security updates which bolster your protection even further.
If security is a concern for your business, Sitecore should be high on your list of potential candidates for a CMS.
WordPress Security
For a long time, many people believed the misconception that WordPress isn’t secure enough for large businesses. However, industry leaders such as global investment firm Blackstone, the NHS in England, global research and advisory leader Forrester, and multinational bank Standard Chartered now use WordPress for their CMS. This goes a long way to proving that wrong.

In fact, WordPress is already a secure, stable platform out-of-the-box. So, where did this myth come from?
Well, vulnerabilities can arise in certain scenarios. Firstly, strong security with any technology is dependent on a well-managed hosting environment. If you have WordPress hosted in a secure environment from an experienced provider, with proactive security measures in place, your risk will be extremely low.
Secondly, plugins are something to be cautious of when it comes to security, both in terms of where they come from and keeping them properly maintained. Security threats will be minimised if you only use plugins from trusted sources. You should also ensure you always keep them tested and updated, ideally working alongside security-specific plugins like WordFence.
We appreciate this may sound like a lot of work. That’s why all the examples of the businesses succeeding with WordPress have the support of an agency partner who ensures all these things are taken care of during the development stage. It’s worth noting, though, that this will also be the case when adopting any CMS in a business setting.
Which Platform is More Scalable?
One of the most important aspects of a CMS is its scalability. A CMS is a long-term investment, and this is one of the most influential factors in determining whether that investment will be successful or not.
You’ll need to ensure your site can evolve as your business grows and your needs change over time. This will require an infrastructure that can quickly and easily scale with more pages, additional functionality, and perhaps even more sites, without the burden of hefty costs for more development work.
How Scalable is Sitecore?
Sitecore is designed specifically for large businesses, so its scalability is up there with the very best. Sitecore is a robust platform that allows your digital presence to grow seamlessly as your business grows, even if you need to build multiple sites to serve different groups of users in different languages.
How Scalable is WordPress?
WordPress is another highly scalable platform. Despite some still mistakenly believing that WordPress is suited to smaller businesses, you can use the CMS to build sophisticated, industry-leading sites. Like Sitecore, WordPress is agile and scalable enough to grow alongside your business and adapt to your changing requirements.
How Capable are these Content Management Systems?
The main purpose of a CMS is to provide a software-based infrastructure upon which you can build and manage websites and applications. While most CMSs are similar on the surface, with the same fundamental functionality, they each have unique features and capabilities that differentiate them
For example, one critical indication of quality for a CMS is how easy it is to use. Once you’ve adopted a platform, you and your colleagues will need to feel immediately comfortable using it on a daily basis. If a CMS can’t provide good usability, it’s probably one you should avoid.
Sitecore as a Content Management System
Sitecore is actually considered a fully managed ‘digital experience platform’ that comes with more capabilities than the average CMS.
Most of its best features are readily available as soon as you begin using Sitecore. That allows you to get a high quality site live very quickly without additional work within the platform.
However, Sitecore typically provides quite hierarchical, complex workflows that might be frustrating for small or agile teams. This can also create longer development cycles than usual, giving you a slower time-to-market than more intuitive systems like WordPress.
WordPress as a Content Management System
WordPress is easily the most popular CMS in the world right now, with around 45% of all websites built on the platform. One of the main reasons for that is its ease-of-use, with simple and efficient content management
This usability allows you to get up-to-speed quickly and share responsibilities across several members of your team, even if they have no previous content management experience.
WordPress also makes it convenient to edit content on a page-by-page basis, saving you valuable time, with its block-based design an ideal method for customisation and site management.
How Much Personalisation do they Provide?
The ability to customise and tailor your site’s content to your target audiences is more important today than ever before, with so much of modern business now taking place online. Therefore, this is another important point to consider when choosing between your various CMS options.
Personalisation in Sitecore
When compared with other platforms, Sitecore’s personalisation is excellent. Sitecore will provide you with a great deal of control over the structure and design of your pages, allowing you to tailor your user experience and drive greater performance for your site.
This is particularly useful for larger businesses with high volumes of potential site visitors, delivering competitive differentiation and driving increased conversion rates.
Personalisation in WordPress
WordPress is also highly customisable. You can use its flexibility to get creative with your design, and build bespoke features and functionality to better engage with your audience.
There’s not much to separate Sitecore and WordPress in this area. The gap in personalisation becomes even smaller if you find an experienced agency with WordPress-specific expertise to help develop your site and improve your customer experience.
Integrating with Other Systems
Before your business invests in any digital platform, it’s important to ensure that technology can integrate easily with your existing software. Whether it’s your customer relationship management (CRM) or any other marketing systems, any digital tools you currently have should ideally be compatible with your new CMS.
How Sitecore Integrates with Other Systems
Sitecore integrates well with other systems. It allows you to achieve out-of-the-box integration with most of the leading CRM software, and plenty of other digital tools and platforms.
How WordPress Integrates with Other Systems
WordPress tends to be the easiest platform to integrate with your existing systems, because most brands and other SaaS products have already made themselves compatible.
This means you can deploy WordPress with minimal disruption, regardless of whether you’re building a new site from scratch or migrating your current site from a different CMS.
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Of course, you’ll also want to ensure you’re getting a solution that will deliver good value for money. With a CMS, the total cost of ownership (TCO) can vary greatly from one platform to another, due to factors like licensing fees and update-driven maintenance.
Sitecore Initial Investment and Ongoing Costs
Sitecore is an expensive option, even if you have a large budget to work with. You’ll be required to purchase licences for the platform with an ongoing renewal fee each year. These licenses come in tiers, so if you want to access the full range of benefits from Sitecore you’ll have to opt for the most expensive offering.
On top of that, you’ll also need to account for development costs with an agency, hosting costs, maintenance and support fees, and various other expenses that give Sitecore a very hefty total cost of ownership (TCO).
Furthermore, Sitecore requires ongoing management and maintenance to handle regular large-scale updates to the platform. When updates occur, new versions of the software come with a big price tag and may cause you to pay for additional development work to get your site up-to-speed.
However, this could be a worthwhile investment if Sitecore’s features and capabilities are necessary for your specific requirements. If you’re looking for a quality, trustworthy enterprise-grade platform, Sitecore can justify the cost.
WordPress TCO and Value
Conversely, WordPress is a much more cost-effective solution with a drastically lower TCO. Licenses for WordPress come at no cost and the software is entirely open-source. That means your implementation costs would be limited to just hosting, agency fees, and post-deployment support.
If you decide to use any plugins or extensions of the platform, these will be licensed and paid for separately. However, businesses rarely need to bolt on many new tools or capabilities because WordPress is such a feature-rich platform already.
When WordPress is updated, unlike Sitecore, managing and testing your site can be done in just a few hours at a much lower cost.

A Word on Agency Partners
One thing both Sitecore and WordPress have in common is the small selection of platform-specific agencies who can build high performance sites for large businesses using this technology.
A CMS becomes far easier to use, and easier to drive strong return on investment (ROI), if you have a specialist partner supporting you.
Finding an agency with the necessary experience and expertise to help you leverage these platforms to their full potential should be another important influence on your choice. From integration, to development, to maintenance, all the benefits and advantages of the platforms will require an agency to help you fully unlock them.
How to Make Your Decision
So, with all that information, how can you decide between the two?
Both of these platforms are excellent options that would serve most businesses extremely well. After all, there’s plenty of good reasons why some of the biggest companies in the world use Sitecore and WordPress.
Ultimately, when looking for a CMS that’s the right fit for your specific business, you should make a detailed assessment of your strategic objectives, unique requirements, budget, users, and other important factors. Use that to determine which solution is most capable of meeting those needs.
If you still need more help working through this process, read our comprehensive guide to understanding and evaluating the enterprise options for large businesses here.
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Announcement
10 September, 2022
SoBold achieve ISO 9001 Certification in Quality Management
SoBold are delighted to announce that they have been awarded the world’s most recognised Quality Management System Standard, ISO 9001.
SoBold have worked incredibly hard over the past few years to set and follow processes and procedures as a company that ensure they are providing quality work to their clients.
As the number of enterprise clients grows, SoBold’s ISO 9001 certification will be able to give their clients the assurances they need around SoBold’s consistency and quality services in the work they produce.
ISO 9001 is one of the most commonly used management system across the world and SoBold believes this is going to open up considerably more opportunities with winning tenders and contracts to ensure SoBold continues to be one of the leading WordPress Website Design and Development Agencies in the UK.
As SoBold continue to scale as a business, the need for efficiency has never been greater. It is absolutely essential that all internal communication works to the same processes and agenda and the ISO 9001 certification allows this to be possible.
In order to achieve our ISO 9001 certification, SoBold worked closely with QMS International, who provide expert consultancy to businesses looking to achieve their certification. QMS have a team of over 50 consultants and auditors and they ensure the experience they provide is streamlined and uncomplicated.
SoBold Technical Director, Sam Phillips said:
We are delighted to have been issued with our ISO 9001 certification, recognising our commitment to quality. Over the past 12 months we’ve spent a great deal of time improving and documenting our internal processes to help streamline delivery of projects and ensure we continue to deliver on the high standards we set for ourselves. Achieving this certification is a reflection of all this work.
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UX Design
15 May, 2023
Demystifying User Experience (UX) Design
As technology continues to evolve and advance rapidly, more of our daily lives are taking place in a digital-first context. When marketing your products and services, this means:
Modern users demand the same speed and convenience they get from the industry-leading sites and apps they use every day. That means you only have a matter of seconds to make a positive, memorable connection with your visitors.
UX design, therefore, serves as a critical phase within the end-to-end process of web design. This is essentially the practice of creating a website that allows your visitors to complete a process, take an action, or fulfill their need in as few steps or clicks as possible.
Despite its ever-increasing importance, UX design is a process that many businesses, and even many agencies, still struggle to get right.
To ease this challenge, and help you ensure your own website’s UX is designed effectively, we’ve written this article to outline the process in detail. We’ll also provide advice and tips to help you ensure your website can provide your target audience with an experience that drives them towards your desired outcomes.
What is UX Design?
The aim of UX design is to make it quick, easy, and convenient for your visitors to complete a task or process, or follow a call-to-action. Your UX involves everything from functionality, navigation, accessibility, layout, structure, and even the site’s content itself.
Designing your website in a way that’s intuitive and easy-to-use will provide your visitors with a satisfying UX. It’s important to note here that UX design shouldn’t be confused or bundled up with user interface (UI) design. UI design is its own separate phase of the process that comes slightly later.
Understanding the Design Process as a Whole
Research and Planning
Earlier in the overall design process, before you approach the UX, you should’ve gone through a thorough research and planning phase with your design agency.
This is important in ensuring that every decision you make towards your UX and UI will produce a more effective website capable of meeting your business goals and your audience’s needs.
Working alongside your agency, you’ll use this research to define the full scope of your website and all its requirements. This will include the creation of user personas and user journeys. These will help you determine the most simple and efficient flow for your visitors to take through your website to each call-to-action, and this is how your UX is created.
This research will guide both your UX design and UI design processes.
Related reading: Understanding the Important Role of Research and Planning When Designing a New Website.
Visual Exploration
Your agency partner should then produce a set of mood boards that you’ll use to create the aesthetic style of your site in line with your brand. These mood boards help you visualise the way your website will look and feel when built.
This is a precursor to your UI design, and it’s done before the UX phase to ensure the overall style is correct before any more design work is completed.
This is another collaborative process, where your agency should advise you with their expertise and experience from delivering successful website projects in the past.
Related reading: What is Visual Exploration in the Process of Web Design?
The UX Process
Information Architecture
The information architecture of your website is devised by building a sitemap, which is a map of all the necessary pages across your entire website. You’ll likely have an existing one from your current site, but this will probably need updating based on all the new research and strategic planning you’ve done.
From the sitemap, you’ll have a list of all the pages and content required to populate your site. Your agency will then build out a content base framework, noting any content that you need support in developing.
The users’ navigation through the site needs to be tailored to the objectives you’ve set and the research findings from earlier. It also needs to be built in a way that allows for flexibility and scalability later, as your requirements evolve and your business grows.
High-Fidelity Wireframes
Wireframes are used to design the user experience of your website. This is essentially like creating a blueprint of your website’s pages prior to beginning the actual design work, detailing the site’s flow and the users’ journey through it.
These wireframes are used to determine how the user can reach their desired outcome, or reach your desired call-to-action, in as few clicks or steps as possible. Remember, the purpose of UX design is to optimise that journey.
Here at SoBold, we use high-fidelity wireframes that provide a clear, detailed representation of the users’ flow to all calls-to-action. This is directed and influenced by the things we learned in the research and planning phase.
These wireframes are typically built on a standard desktop size, but they can be done on a mobile device screen size if you want your site to be designed mobile-first.
Wireframes are used to create the UX so you don’t get distracted by the visual design when evaluating the user journeys. This allows you to focus completely on the flow and the experience the user will have when visiting your site, without worrying about the aesthetic elements. It proves to be a much more effective approach towards creating an experience that will satisfy your visitors and help you achieve your objectives.
Again, this will be a collaborative process in which you’ll work closely with your agency, providing feedback on the wireframes to ensure they align with your requirements.
Once the mood boards and the wireframes are approved, all that’s left to do is apply the design to the wireframes to bring your website’s design to life. This makes the UI design process very quick and easy from here.
A Quick Word on Accessibility
Accessibility is a crucial aspect of any user experience.
Accessibility refers to how easy and accessible technology is for all users, regardless of their physical ability, location, personal background, or any other factors. While accessibility is primarily a concern for the UI design team, it’s also important in optimising your UX as well. After all, a website that isn’t accessible simply cannot be considered to have a good UX.
If accessibility isn’t included as a core component of your web design process, you should raise this as a concern with your agency.
Here at SoBold, accessibility is a key part of all our design processes, as we believe that all technology must be fully inclusive and equally available to everyone.
Related reading: You can learn all about what it takes to deliver good usability through your website in our related article here.
Finding the Optimum Balance
As touched on earlier, your target audience will be visiting your site with a goal in mind, and the UX is what enables them to achieve that easily.
Of course, you also have business objectives to achieve through your website, which must also be supported by UX design. That creates the need for balance between a UX that serves your visitors and supports your business strategy simultaneously. Your design should also play the important role of directing visitors to the calls-to-action that you want them to engage with.
Finding this balance is a challenge, and one that could have a negative impact if you get it wrong. This is where the guidance and expertise of a specialist agency partner becomes so important. All design is collaborative and iterative, and UX design is all about compromising to find the right balance.
The Business Benefits of Great UX
Finding a design agency you can trust, and investing the time to work with them to craft a truly outstanding user experience, will prove well worth it in the long-run.
UX design is complex, but the right agency can guide you by demystifying the process and helping you make the right decisions at every step. Finding that aforementioned balance between your strategic objectives and your target audience’s best interests can have a transformational impact on the performance of your website.
Providing your visitors with a great UX can deliver a wealth of other benefits as well, not only to the performance of your website but to your wider business too. For instance, a study by
Some of these additional benefits include:
Your UX isn’t Complete Without User Interface Design
The key thing to remember is that good UX design is really just helping your website visitors travel from their entry point to wherever they need to get to as easily and efficiently as possible.
In the UX phase of your project, you need to consider who the user is, what they’re aiming to do, and then determine how to enable them to do that with an intuitive design.
Once your UX design begins to come together, and you’re satisfied with everything, the next step will be for your agency partner to begin to design your user interface.
While UX and UI are separate, they’re also intrinsically linked. They need to work together seamlessly and complement each other in order for your website to be successful.
If you’d like to take a step back and learn more about the overall process of web design, read our related article here.
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Digital Business
5 January, 2023
WordPress vs Umbraco – Comparing Both Content Management Systems
When you’re tasked with selecting a content management system (CMS) for your business, you’ll likely appreciate that the number of viable options available can make things complicated. From Drupal, to Umbraco, to WordPress, there are plenty of quality technology platforms to choose from.
But finding the CMS that’s most suitable for your specific business is an important process that requires careful consideration and a lot of research. Of course, devoting sufficient time to this can be difficult when you have dozens of other priorities on your mind.
To ease this challenge for you, this article will make the process of choosing between two popular CMSs much simpler. In this new content series, we’re providing direct, objective comparisons between some of the leading options for CMSs today.
This second article of the series will look at the comparison between Umbraco and WordPress, and you can find links to the rest of the articles in this series at the bottom of this page.
The Platforms
A CMS is a software-based technology platform upon which you can build and manage websites and applications. While most CMSs are similar in terms of their fundamental functionality, they each have varying levels of complexity and development requirements.
Umbraco
It’s important to start by noting that Umbraco is a platform intended specifically for developers with a certain level of technical proficiency.
When you first set up Umbraco, it won’t be approachable for the average marketing manager or any other non-technical users. Initially, much of the key functionality expected from a CMS will be missing. The purpose of this is to encourage you to spend time and money developing the platform. Often, this has been known to rule out Umbraco as a viable option for a lot of businesses.
To get full value out of Umbraco, you’ll almost certainly need to hire someone – either an agency partner or an in-house developer – to help you get things up and running.
Having said that, no matter which CMS you choose, you’ll be significantly better off working with a platform-specific web development agency supporting you. For most businesses, an agency plays a crucial role in helping you implement your new system and develop your site (but more on that later).
WordPress
WordPress is the polar opposite of Umbraco, in the sense that it’s designed so that anyone – even if you have no previous content management experience – can use it easily. That’s why it’s the most popular CMS available today, with around 45% of all websites on the Internet built using the platform.
Almost everything you need to manage the day-to-day responsibilities of your website comes readily available in the software, making it much more suitable for a wider range of businesses.
This allows you to begin building immediately and facilitates a quick time-to-market for your websites and applications. WordPress’s rich, dynamic features that come pre-existing with the platform “out-of-the-box” are to thank for that.
Content Management and Usability
You should consider ease-of-use as a key indication of whether or not you want to invest in a CMS. If a CMS doesn’t offer simple, intuitive usability, you’re probably better off avoiding it.
Umbraco’s Usability
As mentioned above, in its initial state, Umbraco can be very difficult to work with for the average user. It’s mostly intended for more technical users who have coding skills or some development experience to build the infrastructure.
However, once you’ve invested sufficient time and money into tailoring the platform to your own preferences, it becomes a great tool for publishing and editing content on a website. Umbraco has a wealth of features that allow you to create high quality websites and dynamic web pages.
On a side note, if you’re a Microsoft user, you’ll be pleased to see some similarities in the structure of Umbraco’s user interface (UI).
WordPress’s Usability
WordPress is far more straightforward when it comes to usability. It provides you with a convenient, efficient user interface (UI) that allows seamless publishing, management, and editing of content on your sites.
It’s simple editing content on a page-by-page basis in WordPress, which saves you valuable time, with a handy block-based design.
The ease-of-use makes it possible to share responsibilities across your team, even if some of you don’t have any previous experience with a CMS, unlike the more technical Umbraco platform.
Customisation
Customisation with Umbraco
Umbraco is known for being highly customisable and flexible. It’s best used as a clean slate for developers to tailor to the business’s requirements. However, this isn’t easy to do for the average user.
As mentioned earlier, Umbraco isn’t suitable for the average CMS user in its initial state. Unlike most CMSs, you’re required to spend some time customising Umbraco in order to make it into a platform that’s approachable and easy-to-use. Once you’ve done that, however, Umbraco can become an excellent CMS with great content editing capabilities.
Customisation with WordPress
WordPress allows you to customise it to your own liking as well. The difference here is that you don’t need to change much about WordPress’s set of tools and features before you can begin using it comfortably.
This allows you to create quality content from day one, with the freedom and flexibility to make adjustments to the platform as and when you require. WordPress is also an easier platform to upgrade with custom features due to the quality of its community-sourced plugins.
How Secure is Each Platform?
Cyber security is becoming a greater concern each day for businesses. Choosing a platform that delivers robust security should be a top priority, so you can have full confidence in the protection of your data.
Umbraco’s Security
Umbraco comes with a high level of in-built security. The software is based on Microsoft’s .NET platform, which gives it support from Code Access Security (CAS). Working alongside that CAS, Umbraco provides identity-based security, and that makes it considerably more secure than the average CMS.
Having said that, you shouldn’t let this act as an excuse for your agency partner to take security for granted. Every web development project should be approached with security at the core, no matter what in-built protection the platform has.
It’s also important to note that Umbraco is an open-source platform, meaning a community of developers regularly creates updates and new features within the software. This means that any new additions should be tested carefully for security in case they create new vulnerabilities.
WordPress’s Security
While it is generally very secure, WordPress is another open-source platform backed by an active developer community. It’s important to be cautious of the raft of new features, updates, and plugins that are regularly released.
From a security perspective, be mindful of plugins, both in terms of where they come from and ensuring they’re correctly tested, maintained, and updated. For any CMS, these issues are best left to an experienced agency partner who has the expertise to minimise these risks for you.
Aside from that, WordPress does offer enterprise-grade security, with organisations like globally renowned pharmaceutical company Hutch Med and leading venture capitalist firm Balderton Capital using it today.
How Scalable is Each Platform?
Scalability should be another important part of your criteria when selecting a CMS. Fast, agile expansion is crucial for the platform, just as they are for your business as it grows.
Therefore, you need your digital infrastructure to be able to scale cost-effectively with more pages, additional functionality, and perhaps even more sites.
Scalability with Umbraco
Umbraco’s scalability is one of its strengths. With Umbraco, your site can seamlessly evolve as your business grows and your requirements change.
It’s especially useful for teams that need to manage a high volume of pages simultaneously, making it very suitable for large businesses.
Scalability with WordPress
In the past, WordPress mistakenly had a reputation among some for being most suitable for smaller businesses. However, its excellent scalability proves that to be nothing more than a myth.
Just like Umbraco, WordPress is agile and scalable enough to grow alongside your business and adapt to your changing requirements.
Cost and TCO
A CMS is a big investment, and should be considered a long-term one. In order to ensure you’re achieving a strong return on investment (ROI), it’s helpful to find a platform that offers good value and a low total cost of ownership (TCO).
When assessing this, it’s important to factor in costs such as hosting, licenses, agency fees, maintenance, bespoke development, and more.
Umbraco’s Up-Front Work and Ongoing Costs
Because it’s open-source, Umbraco can be free-to-use.
However, as mentioned earlier, it’s a platform that requires a great deal of technical expertise and initial development work. That will typically involve longer timelines with your agency than other CMSs, which inevitably mean high costs. Because it’s a complex platform, you’ll also face higher costs whenever you need to develop new functionality or work on integrations.
WordPress Value and TCO
WordPress comes with a far lower TCO than most other CMS options. Its ease-of-use and flexibility out-of-the-box make it a very cost-effective platform.
WordPress licenses are free, so your implementation costs would be limited to just hosting, agency fees, and post-deployment support.
Any plugins or extensions you want to apply to the platform will be licensed and paid for separately, but it’s unlikely you’ll need to add many new capabilities because it’s such a feature-rich platform by itself.
Developer Communities
If a technology platform is supported by a strong community of developers, that will be highly beneficial to your business. Dedicated users from around the world work hard to continuously create improvements, additions, and updates to help the software become the best it can be.
Umbraco’s Community
Umbraco has been around since the year 2000, making it one of the oldest CMSs. That means it’s had a long time for a large, skilled community of developers to grow around it.
As touched on earlier, Umbraco is built on a Microsoft-based infrastructure, using a C# framework, and is the most popular platform of this kind.
However, it’s important to note that Umbraco is facing some decline. More popular platforms, like WordPress, gaining widespread adoption have seen developments with Umbraco slow down in recent years.
WordPress’s Community
WordPress has a healthy global community devoted to constantly improving the platform.
WordPress developers are renowned for their creativity, producing a wealth of innovative new themes and plugins that can be used by any business with ease.
The WordPress community also regularly holds free events to help people learn more about how to use the platform. For instance, WordCamp is a non-profit event that has been running since 2006 across several continents.
The Important Role of an Agency
As touched on throughout this article, another factor which will influence the success of any projects with your chosen CMS is a development agency.
When finding the right CMS is such a challenge by itself, many businesses underestimate the importance of finding the right agency partner to support you with your CMS.
But as mentioned earlier, how well you handle critical aspects of the platform like security, testing, usability, and even your TCO are often determined by your agency.
With Umbraco, all the platform’s functionality has to be custom coded, which makes development time in the back-end longer than most businesses expect. This also makes Umbraco difficult to work with internally, as well as for any maintenance and updates. When working with an agency, this will see your costs increase when compared to WordPress technology.
Whichever CMS you pick, they’re all considerably easier to use, and to achieve healthy ROI, with a specialist partner supporting you. Finding an agency with the right experience and expertise to help you unlock the full potential of your platform should be another important part of your overall decision.
Making Your Decision
So, how do you take all these comparisons and decide which CMS is right for your business?
In all honesty, both Umbraco and WordPress are both good options that would work well for most businesses. Although, it is generally accepted that Umbraco is a less approachable platform than WordPress unless you have technical skills within your team.
In order to determine which one will be more suitable, it’s useful to look at each of the characteristics listed in this article in relation to your unique requirements and business needs.
Remember that every business, and every web development project, is different. Think carefully about your specific strategic objectives, budget, users, technical specifications, and any other important factors. That should make it clear which CMS is the better choice to deliver what you’re looking for.
If you need more help in your evaluation of the various CMS options:
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Digital Business
10 March, 2023
How Healthcare Businesses Should Approach Bespoke Web Development to Set Themselves Up for Success
Many businesses in the healthcare sector require some form of bespoke web development in order to remain competitive today. But entering into a bespoke development project can be a daunting challenge, with plenty of risks attached to it.
This article will answer your pressing questions about bespoke web development, and provide you with a step-by-step guide to set yourself up for success when approaching your own project.
In recent years, modern healthcare has been driven forward by great advances in technology. Organisations in the healthcare sector have leveraged cutting-edge digital technology to transform the way healthcare services are delivered for the better.
But with that positive change comes a shift in expectations to improve technology across the board.
Whether you’re a practitioner or a healthcare solution provider, you now must deliver your services to your end-users through the latest digital channels if you want to keep up with the rest of the industry.
If you’re unable to meet modern expectations for an effortless consumer-grade user experience (UX), your clients and partners will be left unsatisfied and may look elsewhere for a more convenient alternative. This can also apply to your internal systems and processes, as your employees also want intuitive digital tools in order to do their work efficiently and effectively.
To achieve this, you need a sophisticated website that serves your users in a way that’s specifically tailored to their needs and preferences, while also supporting your strategic business objectives. Given the complexity of the healthcare sector, that will likely require you to develop a website with bespoke features and functionality.
Of course, any website you develop also needs to be secure and compliant, and flexible enough to adapt as your business grows or healthcare technology trends continue to evolve.
Going Beyond the Basics with Bespoke Development
While a more straightforward, simple website may be sufficient for small and medium-sized businesses, such a limited approach will prevent companies in the healthcare sector from retaining clients and staying competitive.
If you’re struggling to deliver exactly what your clients or other users are looking for, particularly in an industry as technical as healthcare, you may need to build a bespoke website. This could include anything from:
With a bespoke development project, the possibilities – and opportunities for innovation and growth – are virtually endless. You can discuss your current business challenges among your team, and then create something purpose-built to solve those specific challenges.
Of course, coming up with an idea for an exciting new site is the easy part. For many businesses, it’s an additional challenge to know where to go next. To make that easier for you, we’ve provided a simple, proven process here to help you plan and launch a bespoke web development project that will set you up for success.
A Process for Approaching Your Bespoke Development Project
Start with the “why” and think about what you’re trying to achieve
As touched on above, it’s important to have a specific reason for building a bespoke site. Whether it’s to achieve a strategic business goal, like customer growth, or overcome a prominent challenge, like inefficient processes, you need a clear purpose.
Determine exactly what you’re trying to achieve with your website and why it’s being developed. A big part of this will also relate to delivering on a specific need or solving a specific problem for your users as well.
Thinking of how it will help your users in a valuable way will make it easier to understand what sort of features and functionality you’ll require.
List all your requirements and use them to create a project brief
Once you’ve completed that first step, you’ll already see a list taking shape, with requirements for design, usability, capabilities, and so on.
Note down all those things your website needs to do and use that to create a project brief. This is a simple written document containing all the ideas you think are relevant to your site, including both functional and non-functional requirements.
The purpose of this is to make your request as clear as possible for the design and development agencies you speak to.
The more specific and detailed your brief is, the better, and that includes things like your initial ideas for cost and timelines. This will help ensure your agency will deliver what you’re asking for on time, within your budget, and matching your specifications. Without a clear, specific brief, you could wind up disappointed and maybe even over-spending.
Evaluate the options for a technology platform to build on
Most websites on the Internet are built using a content management system (CMS). This is almost certainly the type of platform you’ll want to use to create, edit, and publish all the content on your website and manage things behind the scenes.
Every business is unique, and every bespoke development project is different, so you need to use the work you’ve done in the previous two steps to help you select the right CMS.
By this point, when you’re evaluating platforms, you should already know your objectives, your requirements, your users’ needs, your budget, your existing technology stack, and so on.
Take all these factors and use them to determine which CMS is the best suited to deliver exactly what you want.
Something that’s important to note is that integrating a new website with other systems can be complex, particularly if you’re building your site on a new platform rather than an existing one.
When planning a bespoke development project, you’ll need to consider how easily your new platform will integrate with your other systems.
We recently produced a helpful series of articles comparing some of the leading CMSs for enterprise website development. You can read those here:
Find the right agency partner to design and develop your site with you
As mentioned earlier, you’ll likely need to find a design and development agency to partner with in order to create a bespoke website.
Building, managing, and supporting a high-performance website in the current technology landscape is extremely difficult, especially in a strictly-regulated industry like healthcare.
Not only should you look for a partner with a proven track record of delivering bespoke websites, you should also try to find one with healthcare sector-specific experience as well.
Which agency you choose will have a significant impact on whether your development project is successful, but also on whether or not your new website is successful in the long-term as well. It’s a decision that mustn’t be taken lightly.
Some of the qualities and capabilities that are important to look for when assessing your options for an agency partner include:
What Does a Bespoke Website Require to be Successful?
Once you’ve found a CMS and an agency you’re comfortable with, the next step will be to design and develop your bespoke website.
This will involve working to the requirements you noted in your project brief, but there are also some essential qualities and characteristics of a successful website in the current digital business landscape:
Enterprise-Grade Hosting
Ensure your agency can provide enterprise-grade, secure hosting, ideally with managed services, from a trustworthy provider. Not only is your hosting environment responsible for the security of your site and protection of your data, but it can also influence the speed and performance of your site.
If you’re in a position to build a bespoke website, you’re likely going to be dealing with a high volume of data and a large audience of users, so it’s important that you have a hosting service that can manage that without any disruption to your services.
User Experience
Whatever services or products you provide to companies in the healthcare sector, a great UX is the foundation of any successful website. People working in almost all industries now expect the same convenient consumer-grade experience they receive from the technology they use in their personal lives. Your website needs to be as quick and easy-to-use for your visitors as apps like LinkedIn and Amazon.
This also applies if the sites you’re looking to build are internal-facing for employees. Workforces now also demand a seamless experience with company systems, and providing this will create gains in efficiency as well as competitive advantages.
A great UX usually leads to a strong ROI.
Performance and Functionality
Your website connects you directly to your clients. Flip that to your client’s perspective, your website is a direct reflection of the quality and professionalism of your services.
If your website is slow, or doesn’t give your users what they need in terms of performance or functionality, they won’t hesitate to look elsewhere.
Security
Businesses today run on data. The data of your clients, partners, and your own critical data will be at risk if any technology attached to your network is not secure.
As mentioned earlier, you need to make sure your site is hosted in a secure environment with robust data protection measures in place. But security isn’t just about hosting. Security also comes down to a wide range of best practices, like regularly testing your site and updating your platform.
When your clients and partners are working with highly sensitive medical data, all your technology must also be highly secure and compliant with industry regulations.
Again, these are all critical things that your agency partner should be experienced enough to handle for you.
Personalisation
Personalised user experiences are becoming increasingly important for businesses to deliver to their clients and employees these days. One of the key advantages to a bespoke website is that you’re able to provide each of your users with personalised content and services, tailored to their needs, at each stage of their user journey.
Scalability and Agility
More often than not, a bespoke website is a key point of differentiation and an enabler of business growth. When you begin to achieve that growth, your requirements will evolve and your website will need to be agile enough to adapt easily without disrupting business continuity.
When planning and building your new site, ensure it’s developed with long-term growth and seamless scalability in mind.
The Benefits and Advantages of Bespoke Development
If you’re able to follow this process and incorporate some of these qualities into your new bespoke website, you’ll have something completely unique to your business. This should set you on the right path to accelerated business growth. But a bespoke website, once built and deployed, can begin to deliver a range of additional benefits and advantages too. These include:
The Healthcare Sector Runs on High-Performance Websites
As technology continues to evolve and drive more disruption, it’s becoming increasingly important to keep up with the resulting trends. A bespoke web development project allows you to reach beyond the limitations of a basic website and give your users exactly what they need from your services.
It also enables you to create a high-performance website that’s entirely unique to your business, differentiating you from your competition.
In the current healthcare sector, it’s easy to appreciate why this is quickly becoming a necessity, rather than a “nice-to-have” for many leading businesses.
Discover how global healthcare group, Clanwilliam, used bespoke design and development to take their brand to a new level and transform the capabilities of their marketing.