Sitecore vs Adobe
The most important thing about a content management system is how your users interact with it. If your website is hard to navigate, or has a confusing e-commerce shop, or features a lot of repeated material, it can be incredibly off-putting to your customers.
An ideal website is like a well-tailored suit, with each customer visit being a bespoke experience helping them find whatever they are looking for. You wouldn’t want to be looking for the local branch of the business in Manchester but only see results for London. You wouldn’t want to be shopping for new shoes and constantly be advertised the boots you already bought last month.
This is the pain-point that Sitecore and Adobe are experts at resolving. Through web personalisation, they allow businesses to adapt their CMS with each customer visit, meaning a wonderfully personal customer experience every single time.
But, now you know you want web personalisation, which CMS do you go for: Sitecore or Adobe?
What is Sitecore?
Sitecore is a Web Content Management System (CMS) that appeared on the market in early 2001 in Denmark. From its humble beginnings as a consultancy to design and build websites, the founders of Sitecore gave the power of managing the site to the owner. Now a global business, Sitecore supports some of the most trafficked websites in the world ranking 12th in the providers of the Top 10k sites.
Sitecore: Pros
Personalisation:
This is Sitecore's raison d'etre. Customers see content based on interests and past behaviour. It is entirely adjustable, and the deeply ingrained and intuitive analytics and targeting that underlay this personalisation makes the rules easy to use and set.
Content Management:
Sitecore boasts great out of the box publishing tools, which are data driven yet still user friendly. A leading feature is the Experience Editor which allows creators to have an accurate page view, letting you see the design and develop as you go.
Scalability:
Sitecore allows users to modify how much capacity they will use with their pay-as-you-use Platform as a Service cloud integration, which gives you all the room for your business to grow.
Support:
ClerksWell is a Silver Sitecore Partner and is a provider of Sitecore support! Sitecore and ClerksWell have a range of support levels so all of your needs are catered to. Get in contact with us here to learn more.
Sitecore: Cons
The price tag:
Naturally, the cost of the software depends on your businesses needs and desires, but Sitecore does come at a higher cost than other more basic CMS providers.
Per-user licensing:
Sitecore uses a licensing model that for which larger companies could increase the cost.
Development:
Sitecore requires a certain level of IT expertise in the development of a Sitecore CMS, the basic framework Sitecore provides cannot make a fully rounded CMS.
What is Adobe Experience Manager?
Whilst Adobe as a company was founded in 1982, the Adobe Experience Manager is a relatively new venture initially released in 2013. Naturally, as an Adobe product, its integration with other Adobe software makes it incredibly appealing, and there is a completeness in the tool.
Adobe: Pros
Personalisation:
As well as usual personalisation, you can assign categories that allow users to set dynamic rules when browsing.
Content Management:
A uniform and user-friendly interface which has good integration with other Adobe products. Their CMS also supports multiple content editors.
Scalability:
Adobe offers good scalability, where you can manage all your sites from one location.
Integration:
Adobe's software has seamless integration with your company's marketing software, as well as Magento Commerce.
Adobe: Cons
High cost:
Whilst with other CMS the business requirements will help curb the cost, Adobe's cost will always be on the high side.
Customisation:
To customise the out of the box Experience Manager takes an expert with technical knowledge. Without customisation, businesses struggle to add value and functionality.
Support:
Adobe does not provide official support for the developer community, and user reviews comment on a lack of useful ‘How to’ guides or manuals.
Scalability:
Adobe does suffer from flaws in its upgrade capabilities and due to its tricky development and customisation, it can occasionally result in loss of data.
Results
Adobe and Sitecore do have more similarities than differences. As with all big decisions, you must make sure it is considered on a case by case basis. There are many business cases for Adobe Experience Manager, but we find the personalisation capabilities of Sitecore, coupled with their partner support and scalability, to be near perfect for any use case.
If you want to learn more about Sitecore, get in touch with a member of the team today.