Technology will continue changing and greatly impact how companies deploy and manage their daily operations, from startups to multinationals. Companies must embrace the digital future to thrive in a fast-changing environment. This will allow them to improve productivity, resilience, and agility. Future-proofing is about anticipating the future and creating methods to increase flexibility and minimize replacing technology.
What is Sitecore CMS?
Martech innovation is a rising trend in customer-driven markets. Companies can choose the best CMS and combine it into new solutions thanks to the wide variety of content management tools. Sitecore has been named in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant (DXPs) for digital experience platforms (DXPs). Sitecore is well-positioned to lead market approaches. Sitecore's balanced blend of technology and marketing allows them to offer various innovative products that use the CMS as its core. The. The NET-based content management system was created in 2001 and has grown to become a complete digital experience platform that can be easily integrated with other products. They now specialize in four solutions.
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Sitecore Experience Platform - This platform combines advanced CMS with additional solutions for real-time personalization, marketing automation, and data capture.
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Sitecore Experience Commerce - The enhanced functionality combines eCommerce processes with customer data and content to create strong customer relationships.
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Sitecore Experience Manager - The ideal solution to deliver omnichannel content from one platform to multiple devices, displays, channels, and platforms.
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Sitecore Content Hub - Marketing content integrated with a marketing platform, marketing resource, and digital asset management software.
These products can be merged into the Sitecore Experience Cloud, which offers great opportunities. Businesses could get the CMS and the evolving platform to continue Sitecore development through seamless work. It is a popular choice for large companies with the resources to afford it.
They offer exceptional functionality and capabilities and website and application development. We can see the significant difference in market share between them and other competitors if we look at it. Sitecore CMS has a market share of 0.48%, while open-source WordPress can achieve 13.36%. However, the initial goals and target users can easily explain this difference.
Sitecore development is not competing but delivering the functionality. This has helped it to maintain a stable market position. They offer different perspectives but a solid foundation for marketers and developers of large companies. Sitecore has had many success stories.
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Subway, a restaurant chain, increased web conversion rates by 10+% on desktop and 40+% on mobile.
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Dignity Health, California's largest hospital provider, reported an 81% increase in online bookings and a 137% increase in primary care bookings.
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ThiemeMeulenhoff is a leading Dutch educational publisher. They have combined 200 sites to create one site to enhance customer experience.
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Volvo, an automotive manufacturer, claimed that the solutions helped increase web traffic by 31% and sales by 7%.
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Luminus, a Belgian energy provider, has seen a 130% increase in leads due to its improved UI design.
Sitecore's development services are well-known among top brands across different industries. Although the specialty may vary, the same great digital experience should be considered for all businesses. Let's dive deeper and find out where Sitecore development is used.
Sitecore Content Management System allows content authors and marketers to update and add website content without involving developers. CMS separates the content and visual design of a website. This allows marketers to quickly change their content daily without requiring developers.
Sitecore has evolved from version 6.5 to version 9.3. I've been with the company for ten years. Sitecore has made significant investments in marketing features over the years, but the fundamentals of content management have not changed.
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Sitecore Development Application
Because it uses all the.NET benefits, the enterprise-level.NET platform enables companies to create amazing digital experiences. Sitecore professionals enable companies to benefit from flexible, scalable, and secure ways to execute various tasks. Consistent marketing strategies enable the technology stack. Sitecore development services can generally be broken down into the following categories.
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Development
Website design, eCommerce solutions, and platforms - Sitecore's development services focus on modular, scalable solutions that offer unlimited functionality.
Architecture planning - Large-scale implementations depend on the quality and design of technical architecture. Sitecore's development principles translate design patterns into reusable parts to provide a seamless experience for users and editors.
Template customization - Apps can be easily shaped and modified to meet changing needs. JSS templates include a complete collection of samples that can be modified to make your application stand out. This allows developers to customize existing templates and create new JSS apps.
Multichannel and website management - Customer experience integration is key to making customers' experience consistent and enjoyable across all channels, including email, web, and mobile.
Integration of external applications -Sitecore Technology Alliance Program supports partnering with technology companies. Developers can integrate Sitecore Connect with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Retail or Salesforce CRM.
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Upgrades & Migrations
Performance validation - Businesses can use standard ASP.NET validation methods to enforce data requirements to optimize performance and improve user interaction.
Easy content management - You can share content easily across multiple sites, domains, microsites, and languages using a single managed platform.
Migration from any platform, Sitecore - A systematic approach to content migration supports the largest projects and converts them into advanced solutions.
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Consultation
Easy integration of content and marketing - Sitecore's marketing tools allow you to manage marketing campaigns and produce quality content. Sitecore Content Hub makes it easy to empower marketing operations.
Functionality extension - Sitecore offers a wide range of services that can be customized to meet the needs of every client or organization.
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Support
Centralized customer experience database - The ability to collect customer information from multiple channels and enrich personal engagements. Sitecore Experience Database has a huge storage capacity and can be used on-premise or cloud.
Sitecore development can be used to develop new products, migrate from other platforms, or improve existing solutions. You can also choose the most innovative technology trends to develop your product. Common code bases and shared APIs simplify code management and improve development quality. Its UI is uniform across all platforms.
It allows for website development, content management, workflow management, personalization and testing, and marketing automation. A digital platform is a great option for enterprise-level companies because it offers multi-site and multilingual solutions. It also has several marketing tools that add value.
Sitecore: Disadvantages & Advantages of developing products
Sitecore development is complex. We recommend learning more. Clear requirements and offered benefits are key to choosing the right technology. Knowing your requirements and being aware of all the pros and cons will help you simplify product delivery and get more from it. Sitecore's development services are important so let's get to the benefits and disadvantages.
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Sitecore Development Advantages
Capability: Sitecore expanded its functionality beyond a CMS solution for creating, editing, and publishing content to a digital experience platform that offers advanced features such as headless content delivery and campaign creation, advanced commerce storefront, and path analysis.
Flexibility: This is where Sitecore CMS can compete. Developers can replace any class, modify default functionality, or export custom functionalities using dependency injections.
Scalability: Developers have the opportunity to offer high performance and flexibility through perfectly scalable data storage. Depending on the requirements, they can scale vertically or horizontally and run standalone environments.
Security: The available configurations allow you to ensure data privacy compliance with the GDPR. It is easy to manage security during Sitecore development, and it is simple to follow the technical guidance.
Robust API: Using RESTful APIs allows for integrating customer intelligence and web content management in advanced applications. It can handle multiple calls, return different data formats and make structural changes.
Options for deployment: Companies can choose between on-premise and cloud deployment, depending on their requirements. You can also choose a fully managed environment using Microsoft Azure-hosted infrastructure or self-managed cloud deployment.
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Sitecore Development Disadvantages
Price: Although companies have the option to change licensing options and packaging, this technology is still one of the most costly in comparison to other market competitors. It is a great option for large organizations that don't have a limited budget but are interested in adding-on functionality. However, it can be quite expensive for smaller companies.
Support: Subscriptions include standard maintenance, while 24/7 Priority Support requires additional fees. The standard package can respond to critical cases in 1 business day, while premium packages take only 1 hour.
Transition process: It offers a variety of training programs for marketers, developers, and commerce managers, with fees ranging from $2000 to $5000. Sitecore Certification is required for each developer to verify their skills. Each developer would need to register for assessment at $300
Availability for developers: Sitecore services are becoming more popular due to the long transition process that requires more resources and skills. Finding the right developer can take time.
Read More: How Do Businesses Benefit From Sitecore Development?
Sitecore Development - Technology Stack
Let's now discuss Sitecore's advantages and disadvantages. Container-based architecture speeds up development and promotes a more efficient development pipeline. Hire Sitecore developers to use a variety of familiar tools that allow them to deliver customized content across multiple channels. It is important to separate content creation and delivery.
Developers can edit, store, and manage content while the content is designed and delivered via APIs. Drag-and-drop functionality allows for quick changes and reuse of pre-built layouts and templates. Any channel can support the optimized experience as they can easily leverage web content over mobile apps and IoT-connected devices.
Sitecore JavaScript services allow developers to create fully-fledged mobile apps or import existing JavaScript applications into Sitecore. Sitecore JavaScript Services provides detailed documentation as well as other development tools.
Website development: Sitecore expertise is used to build websites. It is a.NET platform for development. The developers must be skilled in Microsoft technologies such as C#, ASP.NET Core, ASP.NET Web API, ASP.NET MVC, and.NET Framework.
Mobile development: Developers can use the existing knowledge of.NET to create mobile apps using frameworks such as Sitecore Mobile SDK Android, Sitecore Mobile SDK IoS, and Sitecore Mobile SDK Xamarin.
Database: Sitecore developers use structured SQL databases to store settings, master to collect content, and core to store the most recent version. They often use MongoDB for analytics storage.
JSS apps: Sitecore JavaScript Services support the creation of apps using front-end frameworks such as Vue.js, Angular, and React. While powered by an enterprise experience platform, developers can use any of these frameworks or JavaScript UI library libraries.
Integrations: Developers must support continuous integration of the components when working with complex solutions. They can also integrate Sitecore with other technologies to improve security, analytics, and cloud infrastructure. Sitecore Technology Alliance Program should support any third-party provider that partners with them.
Sitecore expertise is therefore based on a deep understanding of.NET development, familiarity, and experience building in Sitecore CMS.
Sitecore CMS Infographic
Below is an infographic that summarizes the Sitecore CMS key concepts to manage and render content on pages.
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ASP.net Technology
Sitecore CMS is built using ASP.net. It supports Web Forms and Model View Controller (MVC) with Razor. Sitecore JSS has added Headless support to its CMS.
Sitecore is not compatible with WordPress themes. Sitecore cannot be used to build a website 'out-of-the-box', unlike WordPress. Site customization and support that is based on page design require additional development. Sitecore Experience Accelerator, a module that allows content authoring and definition to occur simultaneously with design and styling, can help speed up the process. This does not speed up development.
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Sitecore CMS Products
Sitecore has an item for everything. The architectural foundation of Sitecore is the items. Items are instance templates. The field schemas of items' are defined by templates. This blog post has its field structure set up in a template. Each post is an instance of that template, an 'item'. Sitecore uses the term template because it easily misunderstands templates and page design artifacts. These things are called 'Content Types' by Umbraco, which I find more intuitive.
The creation of templates is a common step in development. You might make a template to display a banner on a page. A banner title, image, and subtitle fields are all possible.
Templates can also be items that can lead to some confusion. Let's just leave it at that.
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Sitecore CMS Layouts
Layouts represent page containers. If you're using web forms, these are ASP.net MVC Layouts and ASP.net Master Pages.
Sitecore's content tree determines the site URL structure. URL paths are used to request items. Items can be referred to as pages. This triggers the Sitecore processing pipeline. The current item's data context is loaded into the layout that an item is built on.
This code shows how Sitecore data can be retrieved using the current context item.
var banner title = Sitecore.Context.Item.Fields["Banner Title"].value;
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Renderings and sub layouts
Sublayouts and renderings are components that can be rendered into layouts. Sitecore uses ASP.net placeholders for positioning components. This allows authors to control where elements are placed on pages. You can also nest components. A component could have multiple sub-components. While I recommend that you keep things simple, it can be difficult to test all possible scenarios. HTML renders are based on content flow, which means elements interact with each other. This approach is fragile.
MVC solutions use renderings, while WebForms uses SubLayouts. Although it is possible to make a hybrid site using both MVC and WebForms, I recommend that you stick with MVC as the current strategy.
Placeholders in Layouts, renderings, and sub-layouts are possible. You can control the components that placeholders accept. Multiple components can be added to one placeholder, and they will be stacked.
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Sitecore Databases
Sitecore uses SQL Server. Oracle support has been discontinued. MongoDB was once used to store data about Marketing site visits. However, SQL Server with sharding has replaced it.
Dropping Mongo was a wise decision. Even though I love MongoDB and agree it was the right tool for my job, I think keeping the technology stack simple was a good architectural decision.
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The Core Database
Sitecore Core is the core database. It contains templates to support Sitecore UI elements and the content feature. The Core database stores use accounts as well as roles.
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The Master Database
The Master Database stores all site content. The Master Database is where all site content is stored. It also serves as the content system of record. Sitecore can move content between instances using Content Packages, which serialize the content. I have successfully moved content between versions 6.5 and 9.1 using Sitecore packages. This strategy is great for content migrations following upgrades.
The Master Database houses CMS authoring and development. This database contains templates, Renderings, sub-layouts, and layouts.
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The Web Database
Sitecore CMS Web Database is similar in structure to the Master database. However, it does not store any 'published content served by the live site.
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Conclusion
Sitecore technology is an excellent choice for developers. It can be difficult to decide if you should start developing with it. Sitecore is not only a platform for new projects; it also allows companies to migrate existing projects. We've identified the most common situations for Sitecore development company by analyzing all the details about the offered benefits and where and how they can be used.
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Preference for.NET technology
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Enterprise-large tech solutions are essential
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A centralized digital platform to unify multiple domains is needed
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Customer engagement via various channels and devices
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Multilingual content
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Personal content management made easy
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Easy maintenance with the common codebase
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Reusable components, templates, and layouts are a convenience
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Development that conforms to regulation (GDPR/HIPAA, PCI, etc.
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Solid workflow management
Sitecore's development services can help you with all this and more. We hope you found our article useful and that it has given you some ideas for future projects.
