While the world of digital experience platforms continues to evolve at a break-necking pace, and exponentially more so with the evolution of technologies like AI, there are still some steps digital marketing and development teams building digital customer experiences on the Sitecore platform can take to ensure long-term growth over the next five years and beyond. This will ensure your team won’t get stuck in an endless cycle of rework, patching or updates that are no longer relevant as soon as they are deployed. While there is no crystal ball that can tell us what the future might hold (even tomorrow), consider these steps as you continue to iterate on your Sitecore ecosystem.
1. Embrace a Composable DXP Approach & Move to the Cloud
It’s not new news that Sitecore’s approach has shifted away from a monolithic CMS in favor of a Composable DXP. This allows businesses to pick and choose best-in-class solutions rather than rely on one singular system.
Why It Matters
- Composable architecture provides greater flexibility and scalability
- They allow for faster go to market, and therefore innovation by integrating with the latest AI, automation, personalization and analytics technologies
- Components can be swapped in and out or modified without wreaking havoc on the entire Sitecore ecosystem
- Reduces IT overhead and maintenance costs, while improving security via automatic updates and uptime reliability
Action Items to Take
- Consider migrating from Sitecore XP to Sitecore XM Cloud
- Apply Sitecore CDP & Personalize for advanced audience building and personalization
- Leverage auto-scaling and AI-driven analytics
2. Prioritize Headless and Omnichannel Delivery
Modern digital experiences extend beyond traditional websites to mobile apps, chatbots, voice assistants and more. A headless CMS allows organizations to manage content in one place while being able to deliver it anywhere, seamlessly.
Why It Matters
- Content can be distributed faster across multiple touchpoints
- Allows your digital experience to be easily adaptable as new channels emerge across web, search, social media (or even insert the latest, not-yet invented, channel here, because we all know that’s coming at some point)
Action Items to Take
- Explore Sitecore Content Hub to adopt headless content management
- Use GraphQL to integrate content in omnichannel settings
- When creating digital customer experiences and workflows, consider how to make the experiences channel-agnostic, so that a customer’s journey isn’t inconsistent across the various touchpoints they may have with your brand
3. Leverage AI and Machine Learning for Personalization and Conversion Optimization
Customer’s expect real-time, personalized experiences, now more than ever. In most instances, consumers are even willing to go as far as supplying personal data in order to get to this type of experience. With this data and segmentation capabilities, the leading brands must take action to deliver relevant content, offers and experiences to ensure these expectations are being met at a minimum, and exceeded wherever possible.
Why It Matters
- Boosts customer engagement, loyalty and, ultimately, conversion rates
- Enables predictive analytics, allowing anticipation of customer needs
Action Items to Take
- Use Sitecore CDP & Personalize to personalize digital experiences in real-time fashion
- Leverage marketing automation integrations within Sitecore, including Sitecore Send
- Integrate A/B testing and AI-driven content recommendations
4. Implement a Scalable Content Strategy
Especially within the digital space, content can become stale, and FAST! Content can take a while to ideate on, produce and distribute, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Finding ways to ideate, produce and distribute content as efficiently as possible is a great step in future-proofing your Sitecore implementation.
Why It Matters
- Empowers omnichannel content distribution
- Improves production workflow efficiency
- Supports consistent branding and messaging
Action Items to Take
- Implement (and use) Sitecore Content Hub for centralized digital asset and content management
- Explore incorporating Sitecore Stream to automate and enhance content workflows
- Document and govern metadata and taxonomy best practices to make content easily searchable both internally and externally
5. Build and Maintain Strong Data and Analytics Practice
Data-driven decision-making is no longer a “nice-to-have” – it is a must. It helps marketers understand user behavior and measure success. In addition to this, there are many legal considerations around data collection and storage practices, and so having defined guidelines and guardrails in place can prevent organizations from being exposed to a whole host of risks.
Why It Matters
- Helps marketers make well-informed decisions around strategy that ultimately lead to sustainable growth
- Enables teams to experiment and optimize quickly with high degree of confidence that decisions will lead to increased user engagement
- Ultimately supports the growing list of legal requirements that organizations must abide by in order to continue to globalize their presence
Action Items to Take
- Utilize analytics software like those native to the Sitecore platform, or Google Analytics to perform usability experiments – and then act on findings
- Invest in Sitecore Search or similar intelligent search technology to harness the power of data around consumer intent on your site
- Work with legal team or outside counsel to ensure that data practices are adhering to any applicable data privacy legislation
Moving Forward
The most important thing to keep in mind as you work toward applying these principles is to keep an open mind. It is an understatement to say that the DXP world and the technologies and tools that are available are constantly changing. Embrace the change. Find use cases for new best practices and technologies. Experiment, and most of all, have some fun! This will help your organization to adapt to the ever-changing digital landscape and make sure you are always there to meet your customers and prospects where they are on their journeys
A successful Sitecore implementation isn’t just about what works today – it is about ensuring long-term flexibility, success and innovation. Build for that and the rest will follow. Now is the time to assess your strategies and pivot where needed. Are you ready to future-proof your organization’s Sitecore implementation? Reach out to Perficient today!
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