The challenges mentioned also include solutions: working in a multidisciplinary way, putting the customer first and bringing data together. The following four best practices will help you unlock the full potential of your Sitecore platform.

With Sitecore you can do much more than just publishing content. For example, you can also tag content for a specific target group, test how it is received with simple A/B testing and continuously tailor your content to the individual visitor. The change is in customer-oriented thinking:

1. How do my customers get to the website?

2. Through which paths?

3. What are they looking for?

4. How do I help them achieve their goals better?

This approach ignores pushing your products or the department-specific objectives. In short: inside-out should be outside-in . Sitecore can help you with that, because by collecting data you can discover what really engages your customers.

This also means that you’re not only focusing on commercial goals. You can also achieve organisational or communication objectives with Sitecore. We do this for non-profit organisations like the water company Dunea and the Province of Zeeland. For example, Dunea has sustainable objectives and focuses on informing customers and encouraging sustainable water consumption. The website Zeeland.com puts Zeeland on the map for all kinds of target groups: residents, students, entrepreneurs, investors and of course tourists. These personas are presented with appropriate content using Sitecore to support each of the target group’s objectives.

A digital experience can only be properly personalised and optimised if it is data-driven. For a 360-degree view of customers, you need customer data, not just the data you collect with Sitecore.

This means connecting external data sources, like CRM or an ERP package, of course within GDPR privacy law guidelines. This makes it easier to recognise customer groups, display appropriate information and thus ensure that the website becomes more relevant. The parameters that you use to determine which information to show to whom can be adjusted much more accurately, so that you can better take personal situations into account. For example, an energy supplier can only offer central heating boilers to visitors that are resident outside an area with a centralised local heating system.

Customers don't think in channels, but in experiences. Whether they use an app, email, social, chat or the mobile or desktop site, customers expect a brand to keep the interaction relevant and therefore personal.

As an organisation, you will have to think beyond silos and more in terms of added value and ease of use, thus embracing customer centricity. Sitecore offers integrated solutions for this, such as email management, DAM (digital assets management) and offline and cross-channel tracking. The Composable DXP approach enables Sitecore to integrate well with other solutions, allowing you to implement a best-of-breed approach. For example, if a specific mail solution suits your organisation better, you can easily combine it with the other Sitecore Cloud products from a composable point of view, without being tied to the built-in variant in the all-in-one solution of Sitecore XP.

For many organisations, thinking across channels also means breaking through the mindset of thinking in terms of departments. In practice, marketers, editors and e-commerce specialists often have their own objectives, tools and strategies. However, if you put the customer first, you will automatically arrive at common goals. Everyone works together to create satisfied customers. Sitecore offers rock-solid support in this area.

With customer centricity comes the change from thinking in terms of transactions to relationships. This also changes your approach to marketing your organisation. Instead of campaigns with a beginning and end, the focus is on continuously improving the customer experience. In practice, this approach can be overwhelming: how do I label a particular page? Am I missing out on a persona when I omit a page? How do I organise the eight to ten variable components? The solution, however, lies in just getting started. Make some initial assumptions based on your insights and experiences, then A/B test them in the field. Gathering significant results gives you the new insights that you can then build on.