Sitefinity DX 14.4 LTS Update: What You Need to Know

Sitefinity, an established leader in top-notch content management, is a one-stop shop for marketers and developers alike. With its most recent update, Sitefinity is now taking their platform to a whole new level. New additions and better upgrades are showing users (including us) just how efficient a digital content management system can be.

What is Sitefinity?

Before we can get to how the platform’s updates are making waves, we should first start from the beginning. Sitefinity is a content management and creation tool that aims to help businesses get the best revenue growth and customer retention. Because Sitefinity is built on the concept of digital strategy and transformation, the platform holds a variety of capabilities across Sitefinity content management system (CMS), Sitefinity Insight, and Sitefinity Cloud.

Sitefinity CMS

As a content management system (CMS), Sitefinity is used to create, securely store, organize, and publish content. Templates, dynamic modules, and widgets are just a few building blocks that lets you create and customize content. Because Sitefinity is designed for simple integrations, you can manage and share multiple websites at a time.

Sitefinity Insight

To better understand your audience and improve client relationships, Sitefinity Insight specializes in analytics and personalization to help craft successful customer experiences. The attribution models built into the platform lets you observe the effectiveness of certain marketing efforts. Utilizing features like customer data management, customer journey mapping, web analytics, and intuitive reporting is a great way to get ahead of the strategies that are working, and the strategies that need some work.

Sitefinity Cloud

For an even larger increase in productivity, capabilities in Sitefinity Cloud makes life even easier for digital marketers. Sitefinity cloud allows its users to streamline their processes across multiple different sites and languages including forms and templates, content editing, digital asset management, and built-in analytics.

Sitefinity DX 14.4 LTS Update Highlights

Released in March of 2022, the latest Sitefinity DX 14.4 LTS update provides a bit more than the usual increase in stability and functionality across all three platform variations. The development team has announced that this will be the final update for the Sitefinity 14 product line, which is why it has earned the long term support (LTS) designation. As a stable and functionally complete release, Sitefinity 14.4 will continue to receive security and critical updates for the next four years, including enterprise support for two years with an escalation option.

Some of the newly implemented features include:

.NET 7 Support

Support for the latest .NET Core is a major milestone that compliments existing productivity enhancements to promote faster development and deployment, true WYSIWYG content editing, and codeless page building. With .NET 7, you can quickly build, maintain, and scale digital experiences whether you’re operating on-premises or in the cloud.

Audience Modeling

Sitefinity DX 14.4 provides improved tools that make it easier to understand the visitor journey and to set up lead scoring models. Insights derived from the most common interactions associated with touchpoint hits are now incorporated into reporting. Armed with improved data, you can do more to keep customers engaged and create experiences that guide them through the marketing funnel more effectively.

Improved Chatbot Experience

New features have been added to the integrated NativeChat solution:

• Proactive Engagement: Using Sitefinity Insight, chatbots can now engage visitors at the optimal time to better influence conversions and drive pipeline growth.
• User Feedback: Users can validate chatbot suggestions to improve bot training for more relevant responses and better service quality.
• Power BI Connector: Integrate chatbot performance metrics into enterprise reporting for better insights and data-driven comparisons.
• Machine Translation: Train bots in one language while enabling real-time translation into 70+ languages for true multilingual scalability.

And in Case You Missed It Last Time…

The 14.4 LTS update comes hot on the heels of Sitefinity’s November 2022 14.3 update, which largely focused on improving content management. Some of the highlights from the Sitefinity DX 14.3 update include:

Content Creation

• Page Selection Presets: Get the most bang for your buck by repurposing and reusing layouts for different pages and sites! This self-service feature makes it easy to quickly create personalized content that stands out.
• Improved DAM Capabilities: Unlock powerful digital asset management capabilities with advanced image, video, and document processing. Out-of-the box integrations such as Cloudinary and Frontify provide the tools you need to streamline your workflow!

Content Delivery

• Advanced Search: Unlocking your most valuable content can help cultivate a loyal following of customers and drive conversions. Step up your game by optimizing for searchability across all digital properties, scoring profiles for personalized suggestions, or leveraging facets to create engaging experiences.
• ChatBot FAQ & Search: Make sure you're giving your visitors the best experience possible with optimized content and fresh channels. Let customers take control through a conversational FAQ system that integrates seamlessly, plus built-in search fallback capabilities to ensure they get what they need even when their query is uncertain.
• Decoupled JS Renderers: Take your web development skills to the next level! Build websites using popular JavaScript frameworks like Angular, React, Gatsby and Vue, while delivering extraordinary content in a framework-agnostic way.

System Integrations

• Sitefinity Insight Service Hooks: Unlock the power of your business-critical data! With advanced low-code connectivity, Sitefinity Insight bridges siloed information and allows you to deliver engaging experiences across channels - giving diverse audiences insight into how they can succeed.
• GraphQL Support: Transcend platform boundaries with GraphQL! This super-flexible querying language is perfect for weaving together multi-channel content delivery and integrations. It's also seamlessly integrated into your UI, so you can take advantage right away.

Audience Targeting

• AI-Assisted Content Recommendations: Make informed decisions throughout the customer journey by leveraging data to create content that truly speaks to your audience. Boost conversions and fuel growth with high quality, targeted messaging!
• A/B Testing for Segments: Unleashing the power of A/B tests on specific consumer segments can reveal how tweaks to your messaging, design, and overall branding affect key performance indicators. Digging into user journeys provides invaluable insights for creating marketing campaigns that drive optimal results!
• Transition to GA4: Sitefinity DX’s embedded script handler makes sure your transition stays seamless, so you can make use of cutting-edge tech without sacrificing any existing data.

Additionally, the 14.3 update includes a variety of minor product improvements aimed at strengthening security and compliance.

To Sitefinity…and Beyond!

With each Sitefinity release, the content management platform continues to make each feature more user friendly and with the ability to create more solutions than the previous version. At Roger West, our marketing team has used Sitefinity for years due to its easy integrations, wide variety of content tools, and its overall ability to drive more sales for our clients.

Want to see how Roger West and Sitefinity can boost your ROI? Let’s Talk.