Sage Content Personalisation Strategy
Helping customers find the right product faster by tailoring content to who they are, what they need and where they are in their journey.
The Opportunity
Sage's product discovery experience had become increasingly difficult to navigate.
Customers often arrived knowing they needed accounting software, but not which product was right for them.
The experience expected visitors to understand Sage's product portfolio before Sage had taken the time to understand them.
This resulted in unnecessary decision-making, higher drop-off and longer journeys to product pages.
The opportunity wasn't simply to redesign certain pages.
It was to rethink how content could actively guide product discovery.
My Role
I led the content strategy for a new personalised discovery experience.
Working across Product Marketing, SEO, UX and Design, I developed the content strategy and personalisation framework
that shifted the experience from product-first to customer-first.
Role: Content Design & Strategy Lead
Duration: 6 months
Team: Product Marketing • UX • SEO • Product Strategy • Design • Engineering
My responsibilities included:
Defining the end-to-end content strategy
Creating personalised content journeys
Restructuring information architecture
Developing new messaging principles
Building stakeholder alignment across UK and US teams
My Approach
Rather than asking users to browse dozens of products, I wanted the experience to narrow the journey for them.
The strategy centred on four principles.
1. Reduce decision fatigue
Ask customers a small number of relevant questions rather than expecting them to browse.
3. Demonstrate product value earlier
Show ROI, outcomes and customer proof before asking users to compare products.
2. Personalise the journey
Use business size and industry to adapt messaging, recommendations and examples.
4. Make every page feel relevant
Ensure customers felt the experience had been designed specifically for them.
From strategy to structure:
Before redesigning individual pages, I wanted to simplify how customers navigated the entire experience.
The existing information architecture expected visitors to understand Sage's product portfolio before Sage
had taken the time to understand them.
Using customer interviews and Contentsquare data, I restructured the navigation around customer needs rather
than product categories, reducing cognitive load and creating a clearer path into personalised journeys.
Designing the Experience
Helping people find the right product faster
Instead of presenting a generic homepage, visitors selected their business size and industry.
That single interaction transformed the rest of the experience.
Relevant products, messaging, proof points and recommendations appeared immediately, reducing the amount of content users needed to process.
Making every page feel personal
Personalisation extended beyond the homepage.
Industry landing pages adapted headlines, customer stories, product messaging and supporting content so users immediately recognised themselves in the experience.
Rather than asking visitors to imagine how Sage could help, the content demonstrated how it could help businesses like theirs.
Bringing the product to life
Research showed that 37% of customers were not sure whether the product was right for them after
viewing the existing content. Once customers had found the right product, the next challenge was helping them understand it.
Instead of asking customers to interpret long feature lists, I proposed interactive product tours that surfaced the capabilities most relevant to each audience.
The goal wasn't simply to explain features.
It was to reduce uncertainty about product fit before customers ever spoke to Sales.
Influencing the wider organisation
The strategy wasn't just about designing content.
It required bringing multiple teams together around a shared vision for how content should
support product discovery.
I developed and presented the strategy to stakeholders across the UK and US, securing alignment
across Product Marketing, SEO, Design and Product teams before implementation.
The Impact
The strategy created a reusable framework for how Sage could personalise product discovery across multiple journeys, giving teams a shared approach to content, navigation and messaging.
The work fundamentally changed how Sage approached product discovery.
It introduced a scalable personalisation strategy that reduced friction for customers while giving teams a safer environment to test new content approaches before wider rollout.
The work also:
Secured cross-functional stakeholder buy-in
Established personalisation as a strategic direction for Sage.com
Created reusable content patterns for future experiences
Accelerated experimentation through the Sandbox environment
One thing I'd change
Looking back, I would have loved to have pushed the personalisation further.
The experience still relied on users explicitly telling us about themselves.
Today I'd explore behavioural personalisation that adapts content based on what people actually do rather than what they initially select.
For example, a visitor repeatedly exploring payroll features could gradually receive more payroll-specific guidance, customer stories and product recommendations without needing to complete another questionnaire.
I'd also test AI-assisted content adaptation, while being careful to keep the experience transparent and predictable. Personalisation should make decision-making easier—not make customers wonder why they're seeing certain content.
Personalisation isn't about showing different content. It's about reducing the amount of thinking customers have to do.