3 key areas to look for when starting with Sitecore Experience Accelerator

SXA is great framework for a lot of reasons where I frequently blog about. But as a Sitecore customer or as a Sitecore partner it will not benefit you if you do not take care of the right things. I have seen customers choose SXA with the right reasons but in the end fail to leverage it. So to help Sitecore customers and partners, I want to share 3 key areas you should look for when starting with SXA.

Knowledge & experience

This may seem a bit silly to say. You need the right knowledge. Of course I hear you say, that applies to almost everything. But unfortunately I have seen otherwise. Without the extensive knowledge of SXA experts you will run into the situation where wrong decisions are made. Or where SXA is not used to the fullest. Overall knowledge is just not enough. There are so many little features than can solve so many things that they can easily be overlooked.

The most heard or seen situation is that something cannot be done within SXA so one should use custom solutions. While there are certainly situation that cannot be created with default SXA I feel that developers turn into custom solution too quickly.

Extensive knowledge about SXA is also great to position it the right way for both admins and marketers. You can do many great things that will help speed up the creation process for your end users. There are quite a few tricks that make the lifes of your end users a little bit easier, so make sure you use them.

Development guidelines

Each product owner must use the checklist below to challenge developers' solutions. I do not say that solutions developers design are bad, but the nature of developers is to dive into code so you need to challenge them. In my vision you need to stick to the default as much as possible. It will make upgrades, easier and you have less code to maintain.

We are looking at a future where Sitecore will fully run in the Cloud and where you can subscribe to all kinds of services. I believe that SXA will play a vital role in the way content management is standardized within Sitecore. So the more custom solutions you build right now, the harder it will be to upgrade or make the transition to the cloud.

Therefore I advice my customers to use the following checklist for every functionality you have to build:

• Can it be build with default SXA without loosing any requirements? If the answer is yes, you obviously should choose this one.
• Can it be build with default SXA but will you have to compromise on certain requirements? If the answer is yes, you will have to determine what the impact is. If it means that certain goals cannot be achieved anymore, it is probably not the best solution. If it means that a front-end developer has to use a couple of different HTML tags with little extra effort, or content authors need an extra click, how bad it is? Are you feeling the difference here?
• If the answer on the first two questions is no you probably require a custom solution. First check if extending SXA with some custom code can solve the challenge. For example a little piece of logic to extend the NVelocity template engine you can use within rendering variants. Or creating an extra field that can be used within rendering variant fields. This way you ensure following the SXA principles and way of working and leverage many powerfull features.
• If none of the above solves your challenge you should create a complete custom solution.

But be aware of the correct knowledge to answer these questions! Do some timeboxed research to make sure you take the right decisions.

Focus on the right business objectives

Before you even decide to use SXA you have to be clear about the business objectives that you want to achieve. Then look how SXA fit in, or not. And look at the scale of the platform you forsee. If you have to host a single site with mostly custom solutions and without real marketing goals (believe me, these organizations still exist), SXA will probably not benefit you that much. But if you face a multi-site platform where re-usability is very important SXA can do so much for you.

Be critical of the reasons why you choose SXA or not. You will probably run into situations where marketers love SXA while (front-end) developers don't. Who are you going to make happy and who will be dissapointed? Be aware of these pitfalls and go back to the business objectives you need to achieve with each other.

In the end it comes down to this: if you want SXA to deliver on its promises you need to know and understand the framework to the smallest detail. Only then you can really accelerate. Sitecore and all of its additions are designed to help businesses achieve their goals and drive revenue. Not to make people happy in the first place.

One thing is certain though. When SXA is used for the right reasons in the right way it will bring you lots of fun, speed and drives the ROI of your complete Sitecore platform.