Sitecore, the digital experience platform, offers capabilities that extend to a complete suite of marketing solutions. Sitecore is also an omnichannel marketing platform developed on ASP.NET, enabling business owners to manage and personalize content and marketing campaigns.

Sitecore released version 10 with many new features and updates to empower brands to create stronger customer connections. The blog looks at the new features & updates in Sitecore 10 and how they can benefit your business.

Also Read: Benefits of Upgrading to Sitecore 10

So, the blog discusses the new Sitecore 10 features and how they benefit developers and marketers. The blog also discusses the Sitecore 10.2 version features and upgrades.

Sitecore 10 New Features

Containerization

Sitecore has its software in containers, and the release of Sitecore 10 has made its use official for developers. However, Sitecore 9.3 supported containers; now, developers can officially develop & deploy containers.

Developers can now use Docker Compose and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Sitecore offers docker container images for Sitecore XP and XM.

2. ASP.NET Core Support (Headless Services)

In the earlier versions of Sitecore, most components depended on the .NET Framework. Now Sitecore 10 supports headless services with a JSS-based SDK.

Sitecore 10 offers a software development kit based on .NET Core for headless services. The Sitecore digital experience platform also allows developers to build powerful eCommerce solutions for multiple channels in less time.

Also Read: .NET Core Best Practices

The earlier versions supported a few ASP.NET Core features, including Sitecore Identity Server or Sitecore Commerce. Sitecore 10 extends the usage of ASP.NET Core; however, this is a partial migration.

Also Read: Best Practices to Secure ASP.NET Core web applications in 2023

3. Extended Horizon Editor

Sitecore 10 offers a new content editor called Horizon. However, the editor was released in Sitecore 9.3, but version 10 offers a full set of functions.

It is a newer iteration of the Experience Editor & provides superior UI and editing capabilities. It retains some of the Experience Editor’s best features, including on-page editing tools and managing surface site analytics.

The editor integrates well with SXA. Here are the new capabilities the editor offers:

1) Intuitive and user-friendly interface
2) Better Searching
3) More editing options with SXA support
4) Advanced personalization with AI & ML with the integration of Content Hub- the platform for managing content operations.

4. Sitecore Content Hub

The unified solution Sitecore Content Hub helps manage media content across all channels. Sitecore Experience Platform 10.0 helps integrate the editing experience with Content Hub.

Also Read: What is Sitecore Content Hub?

5. Command Line Interface (CLI) for Serialization

Sitecore 10 offers the Command Line Interface (CLI). It helps interact with Sitecore instances providing a simplified headless approach for serialization. Sitecore CLI brings together the best features of TDS and Unicorn.

Also Read: Sitecore 10: Sitecore Content Serialization

6. Sitecore + Salesforce

Sitecore 10 offers Sitecore Connect with new improvements for the Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Sitecore enables efficient data analysis and managing marketing campaigns when connected to Salesforce products.

7. JSS and SXA Tandem

Sitecore 10 supports new & improved features for SXA and JSS. Developers used SXA and JSS together in version 9.2 as well.

8. Solr Replaces Azure Search

Sitecore 10 has deprecated Azure Search as many developers faced many problems with the search engine. Sitecore 10 suggests working with Solr rather than Azure Search.

9. Personalization for Sitecore XM

The comprehensive Sitecore Experience Platform (XP) has variable personalization rules. On the other hand, the lightweight CMS Sitecore Experience Manager (XM) did not offer the capability to set up personalization rules. With Sitecore 10, the Sitecore Experience Manager offers basic personalization rules.

10. Segmentation for Analytics Reports

Experience Analytics in Sitecore 10 retains its strong automation and analytics data capabilities. The new version offers new features for editors who handle multisite and multilingual scenarios.

It adds a new segmentation filter to divide the data into groups and get insightful reports about each group. Thus, marketing experts can analyze all collected data and also personalize, segment, and visualize their data in one place.

They can use audience filters to convert data into action points. Also, real-time analytics help find out which campaigns are working and which are not to derive maximum results.

11. Content Editing Experience and Analytics

The Email Experience Manager has new features & templates enabling developers to add extra components to create emails quickly.

12. New Rules for Marketing Automation

The Marketing Automation tool has new and refined rules for better usability. The new rules focus on customer birthdays.

It helps marketing teams create marketing scenarios around contacts’ birthdays, e.g., sending greetings and offering discounts.

13. Clean Text in Experience Editor

With the new Sitecore 10 version, marketers can copy data from MS Word documents to Experience Editor without unnecessary markups and styles. They get clean text with no styles or markups. Thus, it helps save a lot of time for content managers as they don’t have to clean the content styling manually.

14. Improved Data Privacy

The new Sitecore 10 version focuses more on data privacy. The process of data collection via Sitecore Forms has become more compliant with GDPR.

The update in Sitecore Forms makes it easier to remove and anonymize personal data. The marketing teams can continue to see anonymized reports.

Sitecore 10 also offers new consent management tools that help marketers customize consent requirements for different sites.

New Features in Sitecore 10.2

1) Headless improved

The composable digital experience platform (DXP) includes headless publishing by default. The new Sitecore 10.2 release increases the number of frameworks, including React, Angular, and Vue.js.

Sitecore can utilize these frameworks in a headless front-end development setup for increased flexibility. It also helps make Sitecore available to a wider audience.

2) Experience Edge

Experience Edge in Sitecore enables caching front-end content. It helps speed up performance while cutting costs by replacing the content delivery network (CDN).

Experience Edge is better than other CDN solutions as it’s specifically built for data-intensive components like Sitecore personalization.

3) Horizon editor

Sitecore 10.2 brings new enhancements to the Horizon editor, making it a good replacement for the Experience Editor.

With the new “content explorer,” users can browse their content tree and conduct advanced searches to locate required material without leaving the Horizon experience.

Also, Horizon supports the SXA (Sitecore Accelerator) solution, allowing developers to use Horizon to edit headless sites.

4) Easy upgrades

With the Sitecore 10.2 release, Sitecore has relocated several upgrade components into a new database. Thus, it makes it possible to update without affecting your content data. It enables headless publishing setups and the composable DXP paradigm and reduces the upgrade risk.

5) Sitecore Forms

Sitecore 10.2 comes with a minor update that supports changing the delimiter. Previously, developers could not export data from Sitecore forms to a CSV file. Now, downloading in the CSV format is possible as developers can change the delimiter to a comma.

6) Enhancements to email marketing

The Sitecore 10.2 release brings new changes to the Email Experience Manager. Now users can create their dashboard and present more sorting options to view information about the email campaigns.

The 10.2 release also allows sending emails from a dedicated dispatch server, supporting a containerization strategy.

7) Enhancements to Sitecore Experience Accelerator

Sitecore Experience Accelerator (SXA) adds new features to enhance user satisfaction including the following

1. Ability to add closed captions to embedded YouTube or Vimeo videos. Support for Bootstrap 5.0 grids
2. Ability to use the Horizon Editor in the SXA.

Conclusion

The new Sitecore 10 & 10.2 releases offer improvements for developers and designers. The new Horizon Editor is certainly a big addition to the platform making it more valuable to users. Sitecore is making continuous improvements to the headless and composable path.