The People's Pension makes top converting tool 42x busier with CMS and Experimentation

51%51%

Fewer page views per user needed

3.3%3.3%

Download conversion held steady

42x42x

Calculator visits (150 > 6,322)

For 14 years, one WordPress site served every visitor the same content, whether they were a graduate joining their first ever pension or an adviser managing hundreds of employer accounts. Now live on Optimizely, their CMS is built for all audience segments, visitors reach their final destination in half as many pages, and find vital finance tools faster.

The People’s Pension, one of the UK’s largest workplace pension providers, replaced a WordPress site with Optimizely built for its 7 million members, more than 100,000 employers, and the advisers who manage their accounts.
As a regulated business, it needed audit trails its old platform couldn’t produce, plus content approvals and asset management in one place instead of spread across disconnected systems.
Working with Mando Group, the team redesigned journeys, defined a KPI framework, and audited every component of the old estate before go-live, with WCAG AA accessibility across every component.
In the first four months, page views per visit fell from 4.57 to 2.22 while download conversion held at around 3.3%. Visits to the annual membership charge calculator went from 150 to 6,322.

Company

People's Pension

Millions of visitors, one generic website

The People’s Pension is one of the UK’s largest workplace pension providers, a not-for-profit master trust run by People’s Partnership. Its website is a key touchpoint for 7 million members, over 100,000 employers, and the financial advisers who manage accounts on their behalf.

The problem: the site couldn’t tell those audiences apart. Running on WordPress for more than a decade, it had served static pages and the same generic content to everyone, on a technical architecture that had been rolled over rather than rebuilt.

“We were starting to hit the limits of where you could realistically go with WordPress for an enterprise solution,” says James Durrant, Head of Digital Experience and Innovation at People’s Partnership.

The limits weren’t just on the surface. “We were trying to run our website and then have a separate DAM system and approvals in another place,” James says. “It created a huge amount of duplication of effort.” Every published word carried regulatory weight, and the workflows behind it were spread across disconnected systems.

A platform that can answer to the regulator

For a regulated financial services business, the decisive gaps were governance and connectivity. The team needed audit trails its platform simply couldn’t produce.

"If the regulator comes to us and says, 'Why did you say that?', we need to be able to prove why. More importantly, if something goes wrong, we need to find out why and who is responsible. That was impossible on the previous platform."
James Durrant|Head of Digital Experience and Innovation

Integration sealed the decision. “We wanted to integrate with our CMS and ODP, Salesforce, Marketing Cloud, all of these different technologies,” James explains. “It made sense to go bigger because more of the connectors come out of the box.” The team also liked that content approvals and asset management could finally live in one place, ending the duplication that had become routine.

Built around people, not pages

Working with Mando Group, the team went from discovery to go-live in just over a year. Along the way, they redesigned journeys, defined a KPI framework, and audited every component of the old estate, giving each one a path forward. “The team at Mando Group give us a mixture of the technical depth and strategic depth,” James says, “and there’s a nice synergy between how they operate and how we think as a business.”

The three-audience architecture of members, employers, and advisers was designed in from day one, with tailored navigation, content governance, and information architecture for each. The team assessed high-value member tools, including the pension consolidation calculator and the annual membership charge calculator, individually, then rebuilt or migrated them to protect what members relied on.

The result is a platform the wider team can actually run. “The user interface felt more natural,” James says. “It gives us the ability just to let users get on and do the work without having to keep coming back to us; they can pick it up more intuitively.”

“All of the integrations that exist within the Optimizely ecosystem, we just didn’t have any of those before, and that was a headache.”

James Durrant, Head of Digital Experience and Innovation

The confidence runs to the top of the business, too. Alice Leighton, Marketing Director at People’s Partnership, says of Mando Group: “Their strategic clarity and delivery discipline gave us confidence at every stage. The result is a modern, scalable site that reflects who we are and where we’re going.”

Getting people where they need to be faster

The core site went live on schedule, with WCAG AA accessibility across every component and no legacy PHP dependency left behind. Google Analytics and Optimizely Experimentation were integrated from launch, and the discovery-phase KPI framework gives the team a clear baseline to test against.

“We talk about being data-first with things like Experimentation. Optimizely gives us exactly that. Everything we’ve been talking about for ages is starting to come together, which is exciting.”
James Durrant|Head of Digital Experience and Innovation

Early signals point the right way. Comparing the four months after launch with the same period on the old WordPress site, visitors reached what they came for in roughly half as many pages, from 4.57 to 2.22 per visit, while the conversion rate on tracked file downloads held steady at around 3.3%.

The rebuild also gave buried tools room to surface. The annual membership charge calculator, previously tucked inside the employer setup journey, moved into the member tools and went from 150 visits to 6,322. The pension consolidation calculator drew 32.4% more visitors.

Members aren't browsing for fun when it comes to the biggest financial commitment in their lifetime. They land on their provider's website to check something, find a form, or use a tool. Now, it takes them fewer clicks and less friction to get that job done.

One site, every audience

Build and design unique experiences for everyone with Agentic CMS.

32.4%32.4%

More visitors to a tool-driven, high-intent landing page

A promise the platform can keep

The go-live is the starting line. A structured optimization program is getting underway across strategy, insight, and performance. Further phases will bring the wider web estate onto the platform, alongside richer financial data experiences for members and advisers. “The technologist in me is looking forward to being able to look at that whole composable multi-channel world where we can connect activity and provide a much better experience,” James says.

For James, though, the technology was never the point. “We really want to show people that we care about them. And this gives us the ability to do that now,” he says. “So it stops being just words. We can actually take those words and put them into something tangible for people.”

A pension is a decades-long promise. After years of workarounds, The People’s Pension finally has a platform built to keep it, for every member, employer, and adviser who depends on them.