Wagtail Personalisation with the Royal College of Art

Most website visitors see exactly the same content, whether they're a first-time browser or three days from an application deadline. Personalisation fixes that, but it's often assumed you need to buy a separate platform to do it. This talk shows why that's not true in Wagtail.

Using the Royal College of Art as a working case study, Helen Roberts (RCA) and Simon Evans (Torchbox) will walk through a real, live rollout of native Wagtail personalisation, covering:

The decision: why RCA compared native Wagtail against third-party tools on cost, control, content design, performance, and data privacy and what tipped the balance (including roughly 50% savings in Year 1)

The building blocks: what core Wagtail already gives you for free (segmented StreamField blocks, preview modes, routable pages, private pages), and where the open-source wagtail-personalisation package extends that with audience rules and GA4-native analytics

Designing CTAs and triggers: the four CTA types RCA settled on (pop-up, event countdown, collapsible nav, embedded footer), and how triggers and segments were matched to real use cases rather than built speculatively

Governance in practice: how RCA restricts CMS creation of personalisation rules to a small trained group and tracks every live campaign, so nothing runs indefinitely or gets forgotten Starting small: why RCA began with single, well-bounded journeys (like enrolment and open days) rather than personalising broadly from day one

Attendees will come away with a concrete framework for deciding whether native Wagtail personalisation is right for their organisation, a starting menu of CTA types and triggers to adapt, and the governance habits that keep a personalisation programme useful rather than turning into a graveyard of stale pop-ups.

About Helen Roberts

Helen Roberts is RCA's Senior Website and Content Manager and specialises in large-scale website builds, continuous improvement and digital comms.

Helen has led the Wagtail personalisation rollout hands-on.

About Simon Evans

Simon builds digital experiences with a constant aim to delight users through accessible, performant, and intuitive user interfaces. With over 10 years of experience in web development, he specializes in performance and accessibility while enjoying coaching, mentoring, and bridging the gap between design and development. Leading frontend strategy at Torchbox, he has worked with clients like NHS Digital, Samaritans, Sue Ryder, and Be the Business, and led major website rebuilds for Oxfam GB and the California College of the Arts.

Outside of work, Simon is an avid hiker who has traveled to far-flung places like the Canadian Rockies to pursue his passion. He has played the guitar since his teenage years, though much of his free time is currently spent proudly raising two kittens.