Sitecore vs ektron CMS?

Question

Hi,

I have searched through the archives and while there have been strings that mention sitecore & ektron, none have the focus which I would like input in addressing.

My company is evaluating sitecore and ektron as finalists for a CMS (I am an online marketer..I have no say in platform choice so sending me other platform suggestions is wasted on me). Sitecore is very robust and has this online marketing suite. Its very sleek and I can see why it would be enticing, especially for an IT department because with testing, personals, and web analytics (WA) built in, its less work for them to do. [maybe, don't know for sure]

With ektron, you integrate whatever WA platform you are working with. I myself am WA platform agnostic but here at the company I am at, they use GA (google analytics). So IT is initially hot for Sitecore because supposedly, all this stuff, WA; testing and other stuff is built in.

Here is the issue, no one at Sitecore can give me a straight answer on basic definitions. I mean things like what is a bounce, how is time on site calculated, etc.. Why its important is that the company has over 167 plus web sites and there products are composed of what I would call, ecosystems of web sites. They all link to each other. Since I started, we reconfigured the GA implementations from single siloed accounts with inflated bounce rates (because they are clicking off to our other sites) to GA implementations with cross domain tracking with event tracking to track external links off the sites. What this means is..we are able to track clicks off a site to one of our other sites in that ecosystem and its "not' considered a bounce because when you employ event tracking it reduces the bounce rate.

Again, I am not married to GA..its just what the company is using currently..yes..as an online marketer, I would love all that cool stuff, but if the underlying metrics underneath don’t give us the data we need..what good is it. I went through Sitecore's documentation and its obvious from their WA reports that they do not append the host uri to the domain name, so how will we know where someone ultimately came from.

In fairness, they are setting up a meeting for me with their VP of Product to get some questions answered. So..is there anybody out there that has evaluated these products from an SEO/SEM/WA perspective (specifically sitecore) that can give me insight into this problem? Any input from an SEO/SEM/WA perspective on both of these products is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Signed your "geeky" online marketer

Answer 1

Hi Mary Kay,



1. What is a bounce? A bounce is defined however you want to define it. Every action a visitor takes is recorded in the analytics database. Sitecore's reporting connects to this database (external reporting tools can be used as well). A simple SQL query will retrieve a list of sessions that have only a single page event.



2. How is site time calculated? In the session reports, site time is calculated as the difference between the first action in a session and the last action in a session. Each session has a timestamp that indicates when the session was created, and a timestamp that indicates when the last page action occurred.



(Technically speaking, the session timestamp is set by the createAnalyticsSession pipeline, and the last action timestamp is set by the submitAnalytics pipeline, but that may be more information than you are looking for. The important thing to note about Sitecore is that this logic is not set in stone. You have the ability to hook into it, change it, and enhance it as you like. That is one of the great parts of Sitecore.)



3. Cross-domain tracking - There are different ways this can be handled, but a couple of options jump to mind. Sitecore uses a .NET component called a "link manager" to generate URLs. The link manager can be modified to append a value to the URLs it generates for external links.



Another option is to take advantage of the fact that since all of the sites would be delivered by Sitecore, Sitecore handles every request. Different sites would be associated with different sessions. Each session is associated with a site. But a concept of a "global session" exists. This global session spans individual sessions to give a comprehensive view of a visitor's behavior.



A pipeline (yes, again with the pipelines!) is used to determine which global session a request should be associated with. By default, this pipeline associates different sites with different global sessions. But the pipelines are designed to be changed, so a new step could be introduced to the pipeline that associates the request with an existing global session in the case of the kind of navigation you're describing, using the value that was added to the URL.



This may sound like a lot of work, but it actually isn't. The 2 components I mentioned (link manager and pipeline) serve well-defined, specific purposes. Adding the functionality I describe involves just those components. To describe this as replacing a great deal of functionality would be a distortion.



I hope this information helps you better understand how Sitecore handles the issues you identified!

Answer 2

Sitecore Vs Ektron

Answer 3

One of the projects I’ve been working on over the last few months is the implementation and customization of a Content Management System (CMS). The CMS chosen by my client is Sitecore CMS, which is garnering some attention for its somewhat unique approach to the world of CMS and was recently named a “Cool Vendor” by Gartner.



For a review of Web Content Management Systems, see Ziff-Davis’ CMS Review on Amazon titled “Web Content Management Systems Product Comparison Guide” (affiliate link).



Sitecore’s product is pretty interesting. It’s a .NET based product that gives you the ability to (er…forces you to) create everything from the ground up for your website. Everything is customizable…layouts, templates, everything. The product is delivered as a .NET ‘solution’…in other words, you can open the ‘site’ in Visual Studio and customize to your hearts content.



Personally, I like this approach because it provides a great deal of flexibility and provides developers with a way to easily ‘hook’ into a Sitecore website and customize it…..but it isn’t the right solution for every problem. If you are looking for a CMS, or just interested in CMS platforms, you should look into Sitecore. If you are looking to buy, expect to pay more than some CMS platforms and less than others