Laying a Foundation for Suncoast’s Growth with XM Cloud
Overview
Founded in 1934, Suncoast Credit Union is the largest credit union in Florida. Their membership is open to anyone who lives, works, attends school, or worships in the Florida communities they serve. Suncoast’s mission is simple — to improve the quality of their members' lives by maintaining a strong, secure, and innovative credit union. To better serve that mission, Suncoast embarked on a journey to revamp their digital presence and selected Velir as their strategic partner to lay the foundation for their digital growth.
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Challenge
Suncoast Credit Union wanted to position itself as an industry leader to attract and convert new members while delivering best-in-class service to existing ones. They also have long-term objectives to double their membership, increase the percentage of current members using multiple Suncoast products, and extend their reach to other states. To accomplish these goals, they knew they must create a new accessible, inclusive, digital experience on par with major financial brands. Additionally, they understood that to support their new digital experience, they’d need a scalable, resilient digital infrastructure.
Personalization was also a top priority — Suncoast wanted to tailor their new digital experience to each website visitor’s unique preferences and needs, regardless of membership status. They hoped to personalize content based on a user’s interests, language, intent, and problems they were looking to solve.
To construct their new digital experience and help them lay an extensible foundation for growth, Suncoast selected Velir as their strategic partner. We were excited about the opportunity to help elevate Suncoast as a leading financial brand, to increase customer understanding of their unique value propositions, and to transform their website into a go-to resource for audiences seeking easy-to-use financial tools.
Suncoast’s challenges included:
- Creating an accessible, inclusive digital experience on par with major financial brands
- Establishing a scalable, resilient digital infrastructure for their new digital experience
- Personalizing each website visitor’s experience based on interests, language, intent, and problems to solve
- Laying an extensible foundation for digital growth that will help them accomplish their long-term goals
Approach
We performed a comprehensive redesign of Suncoast’s website using Sitecore XM Cloud — in the process, we seamlessly integrated their blog, which had previously been on a third-party platform — with their overall site. We also implemented Sitecore Personalize so that Suncoast could start personalizing content on their new site immediately.
In building the site, we created a feature so Suncoast could easily drop one of ten distinct financial calculators onto any page. These calculators aid users in estimating savings, monthly payments, available home equity, and more. The feature is great for Suncoast’s content authors because it lets them easily customize these calculators on a page-by-page basis in Sitecore. We also designed and built a feature called, the “Express Lane,” which gives users easy access to frequently used features so they can accomplish their goals even faster.
In addition to the technical expertise we brought to this redesign, our team provided content strategy, copywriting, and content entry services, ensuring a cohesive and engaging user experience across Suncoast’s entire digital platform. We delivered a full content strategy and a brand voice and tone guide to establish a consistent voice on the site that reflects Suncoast’s brand values. Our team partnered with Suncoast’s marketing team to perform copywriting/copyediting, and content entry to ensure Suncoast could migrate their valuable existing content and leverage their new site’s design to present that content more effectively.
Our approach included:
- Redesigning Suncoast’s site on Sitecore XM cloud and closely integrating their blog
- Implementing Sitecore Personalize to facilitate basic and advanced personalization
- Creating a feature that allows content authors to easily add financial calculators to any page and customize them in Sitecore
- Designing and building the “Express Lane” feature to fast-track users in accomplishing their goals
- Partnering with Suncoast’s marketing team on copywriting and content entry to help Suncoast make the most of their new site
Solution
By leveraging Sitecore XM Cloud and Personalize, Velir has transformed Suncoast Credit Union's digital presence by elevating their user experience, driving conversions, and helping them assert themselves as a leading financial brand. Their redesigned website, which debuted with personalization, will serve as the cornerstone of their digital presence and expand their reputation as a trusted resource for financial resources and tools. By delivering a modern, personalized digital experience, Velir has empowered Suncoast to achieve its organizational goals and strengthen its position within the competitive financial services landscape.
Since their site’s launch, Suncoast has transitioned to working with our Managed Services team, which is providing 24/7 support services for them. Suncoast views Velir as their long-term strategic partner so we’ve begun building a digital roadmap with them so they can accomplish their organizational goals of doubling membership and expanding their reach to other states by 2030.
Opportunities that we’ve discussed for future engagements include proactive site management and optimization like analytics, SEO, research, testing, and content development retainers; measures to increase operational efficiency like an efficiency assessment or leveraging AI for customer experience automation; and establishing an “always on” omnichannel presence with channel strategy, campaign planning, personalization strategy, and CDP integration engagements.
Results:
- An elevated digital presence that positions Suncoast as a leading financial brand
- Engaged users per session increased 14%
- New member applications increased 8% and new memberships increased 26%
- Site searches increased 18%, but results viewed per engaged session decreased 9%, indicating users find what they need in fewer searches
- Simple, easy-to-use functionality that establishes Suncoast as a trusted resource for financial tools and resources
- An extensible, personalized experience that empowers Suncoast to achieve its long-term organizational goals
- An ongoing partnership that offers many opportunities for expansion