How To Convince Your Client For Sitecore 8+ Upgrade?

Are you Sitecore developer? Hearing a lot about Sitecore 8 but still working on older version like 7? Do you want to upgrade your project on Sitecore 8 but don’t know how to convince your client? Being a developer you will always like to work on latest version of Sitecore but we are struggling to showcase business benefit to client why we should move to latest version. If you are surrounded with above questions, then convince your client by demonstrating below business benefits that you will get after upgrade to Sitecore 8+. Disclaimer:

Before you start reading this post, I would like to mention that the content of this post is borrowed from Internet and idea behind writing this post is to list down all Sitecore 8.0 eye catching features at one place. This post is one stop solution that will help you to win Sitecore 8 upgrade project. Thanks to Sitecore community for posting all these features.

Why Sitecore Customer Experience Platform 8?

As a leader in the world of customer experience management, new and exciting updates to Sitecore’s features and functionality are always hotly anticipated. None more so than Sitecore 8, which sees the platform step up its capabilities even further than before. This compiled document will explore some of the most important and exciting features that have been introduced from Sitecore 8 onwards.

A whole new user friendly look

The Sitecore® Experience Platform™ 8.1 CMS has a completely new user interface compared with earlier Sitecore. The look and feel of the client is much improved. After the initial load, performance feels much quicker than Sitecore 7.5 and previous versions. The Launch Pad icon at the top of the page comes in very handy when wanting to switch between the new Sitecore 8 components and content editing, or experience editing; features that you’re already used to using in pre-8 installations. Moving through the various steps of editing content, publishing, workflow, etc. match that of previous versions — just in a different layout. Everything is pretty much where you would expect it, but with a cleaner look and feel.

Continuous testing and optimization

With Sitecore XP 8.1, everything can be optimized easily—test an entire page, a component, or specific personalization element. All changes can be automatically A/B tested, by any content creator, and Sitecore’s analytics will attempt to find additional optimizations automatically. Advanced optimization experts also have all the tools they need to set up sophisticated test scenarios, like multi-variate tests, built into the platform. So every component and every channel can be fine-tuned for performance, continuously.

Workflow

When moving content changes through Workflow, new “Approve with Test” and “Approve without Test” are available, consistently reminding content editors and decision makers to consider A/B testing at a content level.

Email Experience Manager

The layout of the email campaign manager has changed, allowing for message creation and list importing available from the same menu

Know Your Customers Better – Experience Analytics

New to Sitecore 8, the Experience Analytics feature brings together multivariate testing results, engagement scoring and overall site tracking statistics together in one location. The result is a powerful, new array of reports coupled with date range filtering and reporting facets.

Path Analyzer

One of the new features I’ve had the most fun with so far is the Path Analyzer. Clicking on the map, zooming in and out, selecting successful and least effective paths is really quite fun. The example below is leveraging Analytics data collected from a Launch Sitecore instance: Selecting a path by clicking on the map, leading from a mail campaign to a login page yields the results below. Clicking on an element within the funnel of a selected path visit shows the exit path from that particular page: You can also select a path from the lists in the right navigation, narrowing down on a particular path of high importance. For instance, the selected path below is one of the most efficient full paths:

Showing the funnels of the select path:

Fully integrated Device Detection features

The Sitecore Device Detection service uses a visitors’ browser user agent string to identify that visitors’ device and extract the device properties (such as device model, browser, device operating system, screen size, HTML5 audio and video capabilities). The service supports the Experience Database (xDB) and Experience Analytics, allowing content authors to pull reports based on visitors’ device and device usage, then enabling them to optimize and personalize these visitors’ website experiences – specific to their device and its properties. For example, an optimized visitor experience could include a mobile-friendly layout (through adaptive or responsive web design) as well as a personalized experience through promotions designed for a visitor using an Apple iPhone.

**The Sitecore IP Geolocation service will be available via a subscription in the Sitecore App Center.

Fully integrated IP Geolocation features

The Sitecore IP Geolocation service uses website visitors’ unique IP addresses to automatically populate the Sitecore xDB with location details, for example, country, region and city, when they visit a Sitecore-powered website. Depending on the IP address, company information is also sometimes available. This information helps personalize customers’ experiences and optimize their campaigns through segmentation, personalization and profiling strategies.

**The Sitecore IP Geolocation service will be available via a subscription in the Sitecore App Center.

Social

Social is delivered out of the box with Sitecore 8. Previously, this required a separate installation of the Socially Connected module from SDN. Available from the Page Editor, the “Messages” button under “Social” allowing content editors to create, edit and post a message on a target network. Take note of the new “Social” node in the content tree directly under the Sitecore root node.

One view of your customer

The Sitecore® Experience Profile™ provides a single view of each individual customer, used for real-time personalization, segmentation, and analytics. Sitecore collects and connects data about the whole customer experience, wherever it happens, making it immediately available to marketers to continue ongoing conversations and provide highly relevant and contextualized experiences for their customers.

Integrated content and commerce

Sitecore XP 8.1’s Sitecore Commerce add-on integrates content and commerce, so your customers’ online shopping journey is seamless and, because it uses all the data in the Experience Platform, you can personalize offers throughout that journey. However, Sitecore can also integrate with your existing Commerce software to deliver similar capability, helping you improve the ROI on your existing technology investments.

Federated Experience Manager (FXM)

This adds the power of Sitecore to non-Sitecore sites. There are two benefits: Firstly, it adds content syndication, personalization, MVT testing to external sites, and secondly, it adds tracking facilities and insight from these back into DMS from these external, non-Sitecore sites thus enriching the data insight and personalization.

What If You Don’t Upgrade?

Sometimes, upgrading isn’t necessary and choosing to stay-the-course is the most intelligent move. There are, however, some points to consider before making a decision. Infrastructure – Sitecore is an ASP.NET application and thus relies on the entire Windows family of services to run. If the fundamental components of a Sitecore version are outdated, the entire system can become unreliable. For example, if a security exploit is found in SQL server that is patched in later releases, it may cost a company more for not upgrading than it would have to simply upgrade originally. Bugs – Each new version of Sitecore fixes bugs from previous versions. While many go unnoticed, they could be affecting the user experience or site performance. Sitecore Support – Like any product, Sitecore will eventually drop support of older versions. A support lifetime matrix is available to view when support for each version ends. Marketing – Ultimately, a corporate website is a marketing tool. By not upgrading, your site objectives – lead generation, nurturing, thought leadership and recruiting – could take a hit. Thanks to all Sitecore community members to help me to create this consolidated feature list!