East Street Insurance
East Street Insurance launched a regional digital presence for personal auto, home, and commercial lines within two quarters, supported by a focused cross-functional team.
The project established the strategy, information architecture, Sitefinity platform, design system, lead routing, analytics, and search foundation as one coordinated product.
A digital foundation built to grow.
Strategy, platform, brand, and measurement were designed as one connected system.
East Street Insurance needed its first regional digital launch — personal auto, home, and commercial lines — and I aligned the product strategy, brand, content model, lead pipeline, and measurement framework, all within two quarters.
Sitefinity was the approved enterprise platform, so I built the rest around it: information architecture, search strategy, integrations, analytics, and — new for this launch — a layer built for AI-assisted discovery.
A clear content and acquisition strategy gave the launch a real path into a crowded local-search market — and a shared platform meant it could keep improving after release, not just at launch.
End-to-end product leadership.
This work spanned product strategy, UX architecture, SEO, integrations, design systems, and measurement. The matrix below separates what I led strategically from what the cross-functional team implemented.
- Digital strategy — funnel architecture, channel mix, measurement framework
- Information architecture — site structure, page taxonomy, and URL strategy shaped by search intent and audience navigation
- SEO strategy — keyword research, content plan, technical implementation, schema markup
- Design system — SCSS token architecture, 35 components, brand formalisation from partial references
- Sitefinity CMS architecture — content model, widget library, workflow and governance configuration
- Integration architecture — WSO2 API gateway design, Dynamics CRM lead model
- GEO / LLM visibility layer — llms.txt generation pipeline, per-page Markdown at publish time
- Analytics and attribution framework — GA4 schema, custom event model, first-party attribution design
- Personalisation strategy — segment definitions, content variant logic
- Stakeholder alignment — design system approval, content governance documentation, zone ownership model
- Front-end development — Sitefinity MVC widget implementation against the design-system specifications
- ASP.NET / C# back-end development — custom modules, dynamic content types
- QA and cross-browser / device testing across the full device matrix
- Content entry and CMS population
- GA4 and Tag Manager implementation against the defined event schema
- Heatmapping and session recording tool setup and configuration
Keeping audience needs, content, URL structure, and CRM attribution in sync meant the implementation actually served the acquisition strategy, not just the other way around.
Six perspectives, one shared direction.
The launch touched marketing, technology, compliance, enterprise architecture, agency leadership, and field agents — six groups with different priorities. Getting them aligned early shaped every platform decision that followed.
- Agency Marketing
“Fast, independent editorial control for day-to-day content updates.”
Aligned through governed content zones - Enterprise IT
“Structural changes follow a controlled release pipeline on the approved Sitefinity platform.”
Aligned through role-based editing - Legal & Compliance
“Public-facing insurance content follows a consistent approval path before publication.”
Enabled by CMS workflow - Enterprise Architects
“Digital patterns align with enterprise standards and approved integration architecture.”
Modernised for responsive delivery - Agency Principals
“The brand feels modern, local, and trustworthy while retaining enterprise credibility.”
Balanced through the design system - Field Agents
“Campaign-originated leads retain the referring agent relationship throughout the journey.”
Enabled by first-party attribution
Strategy shaped the experience.
The digital strategy had to define what success looked like for a regional insurer entering an established market. The website was never the whole story — it was one part of a longer acquisition and service journey.
- AwarenessTop of funnel
Local SEO and educational content address informational queries through coverage explainers, local risk factors, and claims guides. Agent campaign landing pages extend that foundation to referral audiences.
- Organic SEO
- Blog content
- Paid social
- ConsiderationMid funnel
Product pillar pages targeting coverage-specific queries. Agent profiles building personal trust for referral traffic. Comparison content and FAQs resolving objections. Personalised hero variants adapting to location, referral source, and prior session behaviour.
- Product pages
- Agent profiles
- Personalisation
- ConversionBottom of funnel
Streamlined quote-request forms, pre-populated where session context allowed. Lead routing to the correct agent with full campaign attribution preserved in the CRM. Every conversion event tagged with its full acquisition origin the moment it's created in Dynamics.
- Quote forms
- CRM routing
- Attribution
- RetentionPost-conversion
Marketing-automation sequences triggered from Dynamics, differentiated by lead source, coverage type, and agent. Policyholder self-service access paths. Remarketing audiences built from site behavioural segments for re-engagement campaigns.
- Automation
- Remarketing
- Self-service
The funnel architecture doubled as the measurement plan — every stage had its events, conversion definitions, and attribution requirements defined before any of it got built.
Built around how people search and choose.
Site IA — intent-mapped structure
The information architecture starts from customer intent — helping someone move naturally from a question or a local need to the right coverage, guidance, or agent.
01 Product pillars — transactional intent
High-intent coverage queries
- Personal Auto
- Homeowners
- Renters
- Commercial GL
- Commercial Auto
- Business Owners Policy
SchemaProduct + FAQ + BreadcrumbList02 Location pages — local search intent
"[insurance] near [location]" queries
- Service area hub
- City/town pages
- County pages
- Neighbourhood pages
SchemaLocalBusiness + geo + NAP consistency03 Educational content — informational intent
"How does X work" / "what is X" queries
- Coverage explainers
- Claims guidance
- Local risk factors
- Buying guides
SchemaArticle + FAQ04 Agent & trust pages — navigational / referral intent
Referral and branded queries
- Find an Agent
- Agent profiles
- About
- Community
- Testimonials
SchemaPerson + Organization + Review
Every page type got a defined template — headline structure, schema, internal linking, CTA placement, FAQ requirements. Content strategy and technical SEO were designed together from day one, not bolted together later.
A design system built for consistent growth.
I translated the existing colour direction and visual references into a documented digital system — Material Design principles, SCSS tokens, and a shared Webpack-compiled bundle, so every Sitefinity MVC widget starts from the same foundation.
A working prototype plus WCAG evidence gave agency, architecture, and compliance stakeholders something concrete to approve — that’s what actually got the design locked in, not another round of slides.
UI components
- Navigation & wayfinding
- 4
- Hero & page-header variants
- 5
- Product & coverage cards
- 4
- Form elements & quote flow
- 7
- Agent profile & locator
- 3
- Trust signals & testimonials
- 4
- Content & editorial blocks
- 5
- Footer & utility
- 3
System principles
- Mobile-first responsive
- flex layout
- WCAG AA across all states
- enforced
- SCSS design tokens
- single source
- Webpack-compiled bundle
- all widgets
- Sitefinity MVC wiring
- native
- Google Maps API
- agent locator
- Performance budget
- <4s load
Governance designed into the platform.
I configured Sitefinity so marketing had real editorial autonomy, IT kept control of structural changes, and legal review was built into the publishing workflow rather than bolted on. The content-zone model turned that governance into a clear, maintainable platform architecture.
- Structural zonesNavigation, global header, footer, legal disclaimer blocks, schema injection points, page layout shell. Locked to IT-controlled templates. Changes require a deployment event.IT only
- Content zonesBody copy, images, CTAs, product descriptions, blog posts, agent profiles, and campaign landing-page content. Marketing manages these through the Sitefinity page builder and its editorial workflow.Marketing
- Approval workflowDraft → Legal review → Marketing sign-off → Publish. Sitefinity platform logic makes the approval path consistent and visible for every release.Platform-enforced
- Custom content typesAgent profiles, product line definitions, location pages, campaign landing pages, and blog posts — each a typed Sitefinity dynamic module with required fields, validation, and structured schema output.IT-architected
Purpose-built intelligence across the journey.
GA4, GTM, and heatmapping set the measurement baseline. On top of that, I built specific capabilities to connect acquisition context, agent relationships, and AI-assisted discovery across the journey.
- Attribution continuity
First-party session intelligence
A first-party data layer carries acquisition context from the marketing site into the quoting flow. Source, medium, campaign, and originating landing page remain attached to each Dynamics lead, supporting clear channel-level reporting in the CRM.
- Campaign integrity
Agent campaign affinity
A first-party affinity mechanism preserves the relationship between an agent campaign and the resulting visitor throughout the session. Deterministic assignment carries that context into lead routing and protects campaign continuity.
- GEO visibility
LLM discoverability layer
A custom module integrated with Sitefinity's sitemap pipeline produces an llms.txt file and page-level Markdown at publish time. New content becomes machine-readable as part of the standard editorial workflow.
- Behavioural intelligence
Heatmapping from day one
Session recording and heatmapping were instrumented for launch. Early scroll depth, CTA interaction, and form-field engagement provided a direct evidence base for the Phase 2 experimentation agenda.
Complexity managed through clear decisions.
Brand, platform delivery, and governance all moved in parallel. Clear decision points and documented phase boundaries were what kept those workstreams from colliding.
- Agency, enterprise architecture, and compliance had different priorities. One consolidated review — WCAG data, a live prototype, the design-system evidence — gave everyone the same information and a clear path to approval.Resolved
- Marketing wanted autonomy; IT needed release control. The content-zone architecture gave both: structural zones stayed deployment-controlled, editorial zones stayed flexible, and Sitefinity handled the legal workflow in between.Resolved
- A design-token change came in late and rippled through widget implementation, legal review, and regression testing. One consolidated sprint got the delivery sequence back on track, and going forward I set a harder design-lock milestone so this wouldn’t happen again.Managed
- Live chat, comparison tools, a customer portal, multilingual content — all good ideas, all deferred. I weighed them against launch priorities and wrote them up for later phases instead of letting them slow this one down.Contained
Design review session — whiteboard or Figma comments
An artefact from the design approval process, such as a whiteboard session, stakeholder comments in Figma, or a prototype-review slide.
Photo or screenshot · redact namesA durable foundation for measurable growth.
The launch shipped a competitive digital presence on schedule, and built a platform designed to keep paying off afterward — through content, measurement, and reusable capabilities, not just the initial release.
- Organic trafficReached about 10,000 monthly visitors through content strategy, technical SEO, and local-search architecture.
- Lead infrastructureEvery lead reaches the right assigned agent in Dynamics with full context attached — source, channel, campaign, originating page — enforced automatically, not by someone checking it by hand.
- Marketing autonomyMarketing runs editorial content on its own, while the platform still routes everything through legal review before it publishes.
- PerformanceFull page load stays under 4 seconds in production — Webpack bundle optimisation, image delivery, and Sitefinity rendering were all tuned against a performance budget set at the start, not fixed after the fact.
- AI / LLM discoverabilityEvery published page automatically gets a machine-readable counterpart as part of the normal editorial workflow, so AI-assisted discovery was covered from launch, not added later.
- Design system legacyThe 35-component SCSS-token system became the organisation-wide digital standard — every web property built after this one started from it.
- Analytics depthGA4 plus first-party session data tells organic, paid, direct, and referral leads apart in the CRM — so campaign spend can actually be tied to what it produced.
Principles carried forward.
This project reinforced three things: sequencing matters, shared evidence beats opinion, and explicit decision points save time later. I still lean on all three.
- What worked
Strategy before sitemap
The digital strategy and funnel architecture were established before page templates. Information architecture, content types, CTA placement, and measurement then shared a clear frame of reference.
- What worked
Design governance into the platform
The content-zone model and approval workflow were documented before Sitefinity template development, making roles and approvals a dependable part of the publishing experience.
- What worked
Use prototypes to create alignment
A working prototype, WCAG data, and a comparative review gave three stakeholder groups a shared evidence base and accelerated approval.
- What I'd change
Define a clear design-lock milestone
A formal design-lock milestone protects parallel widget implementation, compliance review, and QA work while keeping later changes visible and intentional.
- What I'd change
Bring attribution into the earliest release
Early CRM attribution increases the value of every campaign from launch. Treating the custom attribution layer as a foundational capability keeps channel context available from the first lead.
- Looking forward
Design for AI-assisted discovery from day one
Integrating machine-readable publishing into the CMS pipeline keeps AI-assisted discovery aligned with the same content quality and governance standards as every other channel.
From early direction to live experience
Composite showing the initial brief or early whiteboard alongside the live homepage, illustrating the project’s progression from concept to launch.
Composite in Figma or Photoshop · 1400×600px