What is Sitecore

What is Sitecore

The digital experience platform which also offers shopping experience through sitecore experience commerce.Sitecore is also described as a web content management platform,It expresses itself as a customer experience platform.One of the out of the box features is personalization, content personalization and multi variant testing is very simple. It has a robust catching feature with help of which we allow components based caching that differentiates by various parameters. Which also provides the ability of having multiple content delivery servers in a production environment and we can add as servers for many n content delivery. 

Why Sitecore Technology?

It is very extensible which gives us a very good of foundation out of the box for content management, even though it also allows us to build or add the modules and the framework on the top of it.It develops the data structure, taxonomies and content types by providing a large set of admin tools. Its diverse set of environment setups, it is simple to set up as something as easy as a second server setup.

Where marketers change css or js along with page content, it becomes problematic to make them understand that they cannot update css without a code change. It needs the bigger database, and they grow very large quickly, not suitable for smaller e-commerce establishments, needs more analysis of the database and into the database management side of the sitecore. It doesn't work that much good in google chrome, not a deal breaker but a little bit annoying. It works best Firefox when compared to working in google chrome. We need to have a strong sitecore certified developer base to manage the platform of sitecore, finding certified developers is tough in the market. If we want leverage out of the sitecore community we need to be a certified developer

Working of sitecore

It is a kind enterprise level from CMS built on ASP.NET, it gives full control on all aspects of websites to marketers and web content editors. It scales vertically, which means it adds resources to a single node in a system, critically this means the addition of c.p.u to a computer. It contributes by generating seo adaptable url for each website, which is based on its name and path which is relative to the home item of the text in context. As a part of publishing content is copied from the master database to the target, from there the website is launched. 

Sitecore Experience cloud

Nowadays the platform of Sitecore is a comprehensive, and flexible cloud, which fuses the following products 

Sitecore Experience Manager:

a tried-and-true content management system that powers omnichannel content delivery Even today the platform of sitecore is a comprehensive cloud, and many people still associate it with the CMS, that was its foundation. Over the many years, its simple CMS, that has evolved into an unparalleled content management system, and the Sitecore Experience Manager. Sitecore is a powerful, interconnected, versatile, technology-intensive solution, which helps businesses to manage their content.

Sitecore Experience Platform:

The automation of marketing solutions, helps to carve out personalized experiences of customers. The Sitecore website noted that a powerful content management system is just the start. Helped to make the most out of content, the organization requires the outstanding marketing tools, used to meet its customers right like where they are and how they expect it and all this may be found in the Sitecore Experience Platform.

Sitecore Experience Commerce:

The platform of e-Commerce, which makes the most out of marketing automation, helped  to create bespoke shopping experiences. It is designed to help the companies to increase conversions and sales, it has extended its XP with a personalization-driven solution for omnichannel B2B and B2C retail and the Sitecore Experience Commerce. 

This is the platform that brings together three kinds of products and each of them plays a different task and manages content, which creates unique brand experience or orchestrates operations that are related to commercials,, but they all share a common single central idea, that of personalized user experiences. It enables organizations to manage their digital assets, that run their marketing activities and work on sales efficiency, while also ensuring that they do it for the right customer personas and in the right manner. Each and every product of these provides incredible value, while using it independently of the others, but their combined action enables true synergy and creates a comprehensive ecosystem.

Sitecore Content Hub:

This is a single data repository, which holds all company data, and performs all cycles of its management and supplies it to the vendor’s products. all over the customers of Sitecore DXP, there are retail, real estate,  educational, nonprofit, healthcare, manufacturing, other companies, etc. Those contain big names, they are like Nestlé, Suzuki, Subway, Procter and Gamble, the US Royal Navy and others.

The Technological Pillars of Sitecore

The unmatched personalization and centralization, which the platform provides to businesses stem from its well thought out structure and capabilities. Let’s see how it works.

• Sitecore cortex
• xDB
• Sitecore omni
• Sitecore AI
• Sitecore xConnect
• Sitecore xProfiles
• Content Hub
• Technological coherence

xDB: Sitecore Experience Database (xDB) is the main data repository, which brings data from all channels together and that provides organizations with a comprehensive and step-by-step illustration of the customer journey.

Sitecore omni: By using an increasing number of touchpoints, customers are becoming more difficult to approach. And the Sitecore Omni — a hybrid headless CMS, which helps a company scale the delivery of user-specific content through any channel that its customers use.

Sitecore cortex and Sitecore AI: vendor makes it as the most of machine learning and AI to intelligently, that is used to handle data. To unleash their potential for smart decision making, the company introduced Sitecore Cortex and Sitecore AI. They help to analyze large amounts of customer data and it creates personal digital experiences that are used to provide each user with relevant, individually tailored content. 

Those capabilities provide companies to get to know their customers, define their needs and supply them with relevant digital experiences. And also the AI and Cortex used to enable powerful content optimization, that they use the results of embedded and multivariate testing to recommend the best personalization tactics that a company can apply.

Sitecore xConnect: This is used to make the most of the data, which the platform collects throughout the customer journey, that is to make intelligent decisions, which is based on this data. This is an API, which exists on top of the organization's raw data and synchronizes the platform with marketing systems and customer touchpoints all to derive analytical results from data and send the results where they’re needed.

Sitecore xProfiles: The complete data, which is relevant to a particular customer and it has been gathered throughout the company-customer interaction history. It is stored in individual data-rich Sitecore xProfiles, and These profiles keep every user’s life-long information, they are like interaction history, preferences and others, that the platform can use to personalize the customer journey more efficiently.

Content Hub: Each and Everything in the system is centered on the customer experience, That is why content is one of Sitecore’s priorities. And The stand-alone solution Sitecore Content Hub is the reason for all content-related operations. It offers a holistic picture of the corporate content, that helps with all stages of its life cycle such as production, editing, personalization and distribution. Through the hub, the platform utilizes the most relevant content version available at the time.

Technological coherence: It is At the core of the system lies the technological coherence, which contributes to enhanced Sitecore integration and flawless interoperability of products.

Benefits of sitecore

• With the help of a sitecore experience accelerator, we get our websites to market quicker.
• By using sitecore experience commerce we can increase conversation through personalization, because it combines content and commerce.
• Digital marketing tactics provide a solid foundation which helps to execute the full spectrum of the social, content and more.
• It creates custom experiences for an audience, then it tracks and tweaks to improve results.
• Sitecore is a platform of connected customer experience, we can do more than simply managing your online content.
• We have the functionality for personalization, tracking and analytics, content optimisation, building marketing campaigns and gaining a single view of individual customers. 
• By using sitecore we can optimise, create and deliver the content for customer experience which spans acquisition, nurturing, retention, conversion and advocacy.
• It does the things through relevant content to help build engagement, with timely offers to increase conversation rates and personalized communications to aid advocacy.
• It uses social media for greater reach and amplification, easy enrollment to assets like newsletters and white papers and provides self-service for customers. 
• It is flexible across a range of devices to the modern-day customers.
• It is easier to measure personalisation and campaign success through all our customers, we can get closer than ever to our customers who make them feel special among various channels they are using.
• The sitecore experience database stores all the data collected on a customer in one place, which can be linked to our crm for a single view of individual customers, it seems like a standout benefit for marketers.

Advantages of sitecore

• Sitecore is very easy to learn and even customizations are also simple for a net developer.
• When compared to the previous version in which we feel inline edition is tough, now with new version 8.1 sitecore offering an experience editor which made it so simple for authors to modify, analyse and publish the content on the page itself.
• Sitecore analytics helps us to track the user engagement and also provides the dashboard which can be shared.

Disadvantages of sitecore

• Suddenly things can get lost when we want to edit a particular feature, it is hard to find weather that feature lives. The editor works really well, but sometimes we need to get into the HTML to fix the issues.
• The editor works really well, but sometimes we need to get into the HTML to fix the issues.For those companies which can take advantage of enterprise level capabilities, on boarding and proper training is must to have in order to see the fulfilled version. 
• The email marketing capabilities are still developing along with volume capacity. The basics are strong but the more advanced feature still has some caveats in function.
• The latest version 8.2 of email experience shows the potential in rounding out the capabilities.
• At present there are multiple e-commerce solutions both directly from sitecore and closely integrated technology partners, who make it a challenge to determine which is the best solution for each business situation.

Conclusion

Sitecore manages many categories and subcategories of content, and handles user accounts and works like all in one solution. Easy to learn and user friendly, straightforward for new users also.It allows users to create offline registration pages and integrate them through external integrations by using action commands.