Implementing Sitecore Personalize is not as simple as activating the license. Well, it is, but that won’t lead to an implementation of Personalize that’s helpful for you or your marketing team. There’s a lot that needs to be done in order to ensure that you’re setup for success with the tool.
You MUST do more than add the Engage SDK to the site for initial setup if you want Personalize to be useful for your marketers.
The out-of-the-box (OOTB) components being available and working on the site is not nearly enough for a successful Personalize implementation. Your marketers can make use of this base implementation if they’re HTML, CSS, and JavaScript savvy, but it won’t be easy for the average marketer to make use of this state.
Proper setup for Personalize requires strategy and development.
For my organization, this looks like a digital marketer, analyst, and front-end developer at the very least. The upfront strategy work is key otherwise your development is a ship without a captain. You can build all the things you want, but if they’re not in service of the end goals of the marketing organization that’s going to use the tool, then they’re likely a waste of time.
The steps
Below I’ve outlined the steps that need to be taken at a high level in order to see your implementation properly setup for success for your digital marketers.
Step 1
Strategy
Begin with the end in mind. Start with the desired use cases, user stories, and the desired results. Write them down. Validate, and re-validate these with the team and ideally your users if you can do real user testing here. Nail these!
Step 2
Strategy
Map out the data you need to make those use cases a reality.
Step 3
Development
Add the SDK, events, and integrations needed to get that data to Personalize.
Step 4
Development
Create the necessary decision tables and JS Modules to support those stories.
Step 5
Development
Create the Decision Models needed to power the experiences.
Step 6
Development
Create the web templates needed to surface the desired experiences.
You’ll likely immediately notice that most of these steps (3-6) are development activities. Now, you don’t have to repeat step 3 for each and every new use case, but you will probably need to replicate the other steps, including the strategic ones.
We don’t want to repeat this whole process every time we have a new story. It’s too development heavy.
Every time we have a new use case, or “story,” we have to repeat all of those steps again, apart from #3.
That leaves a lot of development every time we have a new personalization journey we want to realize.
What can we do to offload some of this recurring development? How can the marketers do more? Or in other words…
How do we build in Personalize to better empower the marketer?
I found the best framework for solving this problem was in focusing on the authoring experience fundamentals that we use at my organization to improve the authoring experience in the content management system (CMS) itself. For more detail about specific tactics to solve this problem, read my thoughts on improving the authoring experience for marketers in Sitecore Personalize.