The standard model of particle physics describes high energy phenomena very precisely. There are only a few instances where exxperimental deviations might have been found, and  the interpretation  of those is far from clear. Nevertheless it is widely accepted that the standard model is "only" a low energy effective theory. In this talk I will discuss one of the possible extensions, composite Higgs models,  and  how non-perturbative lattice calculations can shed light to the properties of these strongly coupled system. I will concentrate on the general properties of these models, describing their relation to conformal field theories in general terms.