It’s unfortunate that we are going through this crisis for past few months. To control the spread of virus, many countries have implemented a strict quarantine measures-, which has impacted a lot of businesses.Many businesses will also be thinking about new ways to get in touch with their their customers in these challenging times, including us ! In this blog, we shall discuss how Sitecore platform can be used to leverage your business during this crisis.
Start with Experience Analytics
Sitecore Experience Analytics shows a variety of reports for marketers. It is essential that you start your analysis from here, make sure you look at various metrics such as page views, conversion rates, engagement values etc. Start collecting all data to analyze how it varies before and during the crisis.
Keep your users updated with Service Mails
As most of the users and employees are confined to home, it becomes a necessity to keep them updated. Communication with your customers/users will gain trust and makes them aware that you continue to serve them during this challenging time. Sitecore Email Experience Manager helps you to communicate with your users, with really personalized messages across various mailing list.
Adding a notification and advisories
It is indeed essential to make sure that your clients are aware of your business plans during this crisis. If you are already using Sitecore Experience Accelerator, creating a simple popup using Cookie warning message component (which is usually used to display GDPR statements) must be easy and really helpful to share important messages. Users can be directed to page that contains specific information on how you are planning to continue your business, this message can also be personalized using Rule engine.
You can also show COVID19 helpline, advisories and government guidelines based on country from where the user accesses your website.
Check for your organic traffic
During crisis, it is important to deliver right items to the customers, to do that it is necessary understand organic traffic. The keywords from search engines should be monitored and contents should be updated time to time to make it coherent with the search.
Even though the keywords get captured by Sitecore, there is no straight way to look at them. You can customize your dashboard to show both internal and external searches made. It will also be helpful to look at the referring sites which leads to your Sitecore site to understand how you can market keywords specific to each referring site.
Custom Module – Sitecore Covid Insights
It is a free module which you can install in your Sitecore instance as it is really helpful in comparing Sitecore metrics along with the COVID19 Statistics. You can access the app from the Marketing Applications Tile section in Launch Pad.
You can filter by countries, dates and websites ! It is an easy to use tool, gives you a clear picture how COVID19 has impacted your regional traffic.
You can also compare the Keywords that are being searched between selected dates and before COVID19 Crisis. It helps you understand how your users mindset has changed during the crisis. As shown in the below image, it shows the top search engines that bring traffic to your site and it also shows the most searched keywords.
I hope looking into the visit pattern and keywords search pattern can be a key to tackle the current situation. You can also plan your business in specific countries by comparing the COVID stats along with the Sitecore metrics.
Ramkumar Nambhi Krishnan Dhinakaran
Sitecore MVP and a Sitecore Certified professional with o ver 8 years of exp in Web Cms like Sitecore, Ektron, Umbraco and Episerver.