XM Cloud: 6 benefits for your business

In our ever-changing world, brands are constantly trying to outdo each other for customer attention. And with the digital market getting more and more competitive, companies need to have better control of their content. They need to be able to create, update, or delete content and keep websites organized, personalized, up-to-date, and attractive.  

And with 73% of B2B marketers and 70% of B2C marketers using content marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy, content management is one of the most important aspects for implementing a successful content strategy and offering what consumers are willing to pay more for: incredible customer experiences. 

That’s where XM Cloud comes in. 

What is XM Cloud?

 

In our continuing efforts to help brands deliver exceptional experiences, we were the first company to move our core web content management system to a modern cloud architecture. 

XM Cloud, the fastest-selling new product in Sitecore’s history, is a next-generation, cloud-native SaaS CMS that allows users to create content and quickly deliver it across any channel. It offers a truly new approach to website creation, optimization, and content management. Thanks to its headless architecture and remarkable publishing capabilities, marketers can instantly create, manage, and deliver engaging omnichannel experiences, while also managing their customer data consistently and efficiently.

To get a more detailed understanding of the benefits offered by XM Cloud for your business, watch our on-demand webinar.

The benefits of XM Cloud

Sitecore XM Cloud offers a range of benefits for both Marketing and IT teams. With its cloud-based infrastructure, advanced analytics capabilities, and personalized customer experiences, Sitecore’s powerful CMS can help businesses streamline their operations, improve their marketing initiatives, and deliver standout CX. 

Let’s have a look. 

1. Next-generation visual authoring

A headless CMS allows marketers to focus on message quality and appropriate channels with zero worries and delays. Marketers and content creators also have the ability to visually author their digital experiences with a slick and intuitive visual builder.

It’s not the only game-changing feature — XM Cloud also offers the following functionalities: 

XM Cloud Pages
This feature helps marketers create pixel-perfect and engaging pages that tell the brand’s story. With Pages, users can manage all their media assets from a single place and distribute various types of content across different channels, at any time of their choosing.
 
XM Cloud Components
This feature enables users to build the visual components they need for their sites and create their brand’s style guide in a WYSIWYG editor. XM Cloud Components is the perfect tool for content authors, UX designers, and marketers, helping them work in parallel to speed up the process of creating on-brand digital experiences for their customers. 

 

 

2. Dynamic personalization

A staggering 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen. This means that marketers need software that creates personalized experiences across all their online channels and builds personalization into the entire customer journey.

As a natural successor to XM and XP, Sitecore XM Cloud offers embedded, out-of-the-box personalization with XM Cloud Pages that is easy to configure and can be used directly from within the page builder experience. 

With embedded personalization, XM Cloud Pages lets users build web applications and pages with layouts and content customized for different audiences. That way, visitors always get relevant content that matches their expectations. Additionally, customers can easily define audience groups and target them with custom page variants. Embedded personalization features include real-time stream data collection, out-of-the-box conditions, as well as site and page analytics.

3. Next-level analytics

Companies today are constantly looking for ways to make their decision-making more efficient. And analytics gives them that advantage. 

Analytics has the power to transform raw data into valuable insights and helps marketers gain a deeper understanding of the data emerging from their activities. Ultimately, this helps businesses maintain a competitive edge and generate higher profits. 

With XM Cloud Pages Analyze, users know what is happening on their digital properties as well as what’s working, or not. Metrics such as the total number of visitors, average time on site, and a detailed view of what pages are performing well are at the marketer’s fingertips through a dashboard. It updates every minute with new data, providing both current data and trends over the chosen time period. With XM Cloud Pages Analyze, decision-making is based on meaningful insights. 

4. Jamstack-ready

From what was once a popular buzzword, Jamstack has grown and evolved into a modern and powerful approach to building fast and secure websites and apps. And for marketers, using Jamstack-ready XM Cloud means deploying content in more flexible ways, with the help of modern architectures and JavaScript frameworks, as well as allowing the acceleration of content using CDNs. Pages can be pre-rendered at build time using Static Site Generation. This results in lowered operational costs, ultra-fast performance, and faster time to market.

Also, XM Cloud supports any tech stack, so developers can use any front-end framework and build and run applications on any front-end application. Our support for Jamstack enables XM Cloud customers to get all the benefits of fast, scalable, and secure experiences. 

5. Great developer experience

What makes XM Cloud so amazing is that it has the power to be beneficial for marketers and business owners, as well as developers. 

Sitecore ensures that working with XM Cloud is as easy for the developer as it is for the marketer, with the help of Sitecore Deploy. 

The integrated Deploy App allows users to deploy any solution directly into XM Cloud with a wide range of tools both via a new user interface as well as world-class CLI.

This way we reduce the effort needed by developers to deploy and manage their XM Cloud instances. Additionally, developer workflows and front-end updates are accelerated with the help of Sitecore through an easy-to-use integration with Vercel. 

6. Updates fully managed by Sitecore

With XM Cloud, Sitecore enters a new era where developers don’t have to worry about time-consuming and expensive updates. 

Updates are now fully managed by Sitecore, allowing users to stay up-to-date with the latest product features and enhancements and automatically applied quality improvements. Also, updates are compatible with customer implementations and customizations. 

Sitecore is helping the world’s leading brands move beyond mere content organization and deliver unique, impactful digital experiences that drive trust and loyalty. To learn more about why Sitecore was named a Leader in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms, read our blog.