How to Pivot Digital Experience Projects During Times of Uncertainty

At some point, almost every enterprise leader has to face budget cuts and make changes to planned digital projects. Whether these budgetary cuts are caused by economic downturns, regulatory mandates, or policy changes, they need to adjust, often with one arm tied behind their back.

According to Sitecore’s Websites 2025 report, “76% of marketers cite budget constraints as the biggest barrier to advancing website capabilities.”

When these moments happen, digital leaders reflect on whether or not the investment in their digital experience is worth it. But while you might need to reduce spending in some areas, can you afford to let go of that vendor? Can you hit pause on your platform upgrade? Or will you do yourself more harm than good in the long run?

While certain large-scale investments might not be possible, canceling projects altogether and starting from scratch could mean missed opportunities or losing out to competitors. So, what’s the alternative?

In this piece, we’ll explain how to approach some of the common scenarios companies face and provide tips on proceeding during times of uncertainty.

1. You want to enhance your digital experience and wonder if you need to invest in a full-scale DXP implementation.

Why It Matters

Implementing a modern DXP allows you to build a marketing engine that delivers personalized customer experiences, enables you to adapt to changing market conditions, increases conversions, and eventually drives significant ROI.

What You’ve ‘Probably’ Been Told

To get the benefits you need, you need to spend a lot on a full ‘rip-and-replace’ DXP implementation, which involves throwing out your current DXP and starting fresh. But there are ways to improve your digital experiences without starting from scratch.

The Alternative

A full-scale DXP implementation can easily turn into a six- to seven-figure investment, depending on the time needed, the number of websites built alongside that implementation, and the solution you choose to power your digital experiences.

If the time isn’t right for a full implementation, one option could be to keep your current DXP running longer with critical maintenance and security updates while also prepping the stage for your migration to a new platform later. This allows businesses to improve incrementally and avoid falling behind in digital experience efforts.

For example, let’s say you’re currently using a solution like Sitecore XP 9 and were planning a move to a composable stack with XM Cloud, Sitecore Search, CDP, and Personalize because performance had dipped. Instead of doing a complete migration, you could analyze and refactor code or modernize development environments to improve performance. You can then go composable and implement Personalize and CDP alongside your existing XP solution, without rebuilding your entire website.

How Oshyn Supports

While some digital agencies only focus on implementations, Oshyn offers Enhancement and Maintenance services. These include ongoing site support, code maintenance, and new feature development that keep your website fresh and up-to-date. This allows you to respond to customer expectations and continue operating until you can migrate to your ideal modern solution.

2. You want to launch a new marketing campaign and update your website, but you wonder if you should pay for a complete redesign or overhaul.

Why It Matters

For enterprises weighing up ways to improve the design and drive more leads and conversions, refreshing a brand via a website redesign or overhauling the design and starting from scratch is one option.

What You’ve ‘Probably’ Been Told

You need to hire a top-tier creative agency for a project that requires strategy decks and mood boards, and you need to conduct user research to establish your branding before designing the components for your new website. Only after that can you focus on the development of the new website. But you don’t need to do a complete redesign to start improving conversions.

The Alternative

Companies can begin by making conversion-focused tweaks to keep momentum going and de‑risk the eventual redesign.

For instance, instead of rebuilding the entire corporate website right now, you can refresh the existing website and make UX tweaks to ensure the current design is optimized for performance and conversions.

Start small on the rebrand by launching a microsite for one business division using design principles similar to your primary website. This provides a smaller use case to test the impact of already-approved designs before rebuilding the entire website.

How Oshyn Supports

Oshyn can help enterprises quickly launch new microsites and make conversion-focused adjustments to their existing websites. Additionally, our Design Support services consider client budgets. We ensure that what the design team creates is achievable within the desired budget, and if it isn’t, we suggest alternatives for economizing. This upfront approach can minimize rework and maximize efficiency during development.

3. You have a project that can’t be delayed, but you’re wondering if you can afford to reduce headcount & vendor resources and still move ahead.

Why It Matters

Budget constraints typically mean companies cut headcount and scale back their resources in outside vendors and agencies. While this can be a quick cost-cutting measure, it also means that companies might force projects to stop entirely and lose momentum.

What You’ve ‘Probably’ Been Told

You need to keep the headcount the same for projects, or everything will have to stop, and your new website or implementation project can’t continue. But you can make adjustments to your project resources and keep momentum going.

The Alternative

When developer teams follow the agile approach, they can scale when necessary and decrease headcount temporarily when there are fewer critical tasks, but without stopping completely and losing all momentum.

How Oshyn Supports

Our preferred business model of agile teams without a long-term commitment allows clients to easily boost or shrink their team size to accommodate changing budgets and business conditions. Clients are only charged for the value delivered, not based on a specific number of hours.

4. You were planning to move to the cloud to improve website performance and receive automatic upgrades, but you’re wondering if you can afford to postpone your migration.

Why It Matters

Migrating to a cloud-based DXP solution can mean automatic upgrades handled by the vendor, continuous feature releases, and better security. That means no more infrastructure headaches and faster deployment cycles.

What You’ve ‘Probably’ Been Told

To realize the performance and security benefits, you must migrate to a modern cloud-based solution with a headless website hosted on Netlify or Vercel. This includes an aggressive cloud re-platforming timeline to start meeting your goals immediately.

The Alternative

Migrating to a new cloud-based DXP can still be a significant undertaking, and enterprises can also struggle with overspending on cloud resources when they think they will lower their total cost of ownership. Not to mention that the upfront cost will likely be high, and cost savings, though likely, won’t be immediate.

But that doesn’t mean you must give up on the migration; it just takes proper preparation. For instance, if you have multiple websites currently on Optimizely CMS 11 and you’re considering moving to the Optimizely SaaS CMS, you can start by rebuilding four out of five websites using a headless approach on your existing Optimizely implementation to make the move easier when the time comes. This phased approach allows you to take on a large-scale project incrementally.

In another scenario, if you’re considering amove to AEM as a Cloud Service (AEMaaCS) within the next year, while it can generally be completed in a few weeks to months, you can do some prep work beforehand, such as code and repository refactoring and environment configuration, to maintain that same timeline.

How Oshyn Supports

Along with our Sitecore, Adobe, and Optimizely consulting services to help clients plan the best time to migrate to the cloud, we also offer ‘cloud spend’ analysis to ensure that resources are used efficiently. Quarterly audits are done to align cloud resources with usage, allowing enterprises to find opportunities to purchase cloud resources up front and save overall budget.

Additionally, we can help enterprises control costs and manage infrastructure when ready to move to the cloud by setting up AWS resources and leveraging serverless application deployment that can cost significantly less than services like Vercel or Netlify.

Maximizing Value for Digital Experience Customers

Times of transition can force enterprises to hit pause on critical projects. But that pause doesn’t have to mean a complete stoppage that limits your ability to attract customers and generate revenue through your digital experience initiatives.

Oshyn’s services are designed to help clients get the most out of their DXP investment. As a partner of Sitecore, Adobe, and Optimizely, our goal isn’t just to implement a platform or build a new website but to be a long-term partner supporting your digital experience goals. That means maximizing your platform’s capabilities and turning every feature release and line of code into measurable ROI for your business.

Contact us to see how we can support your digital experience needs.