Sitefinity 15.1 continues to expand the content and experience management toolset, packing enhancements in key areas including AI, content creation and customer data modeling.

Here we go again. The latest Sitefinity version has hit customer accounts, the shelves are stocked with updated demos and trials, back-ups are running, CI/CD pipelines are warming up. Some high-fives and fist bumps have gone around. And… we go again. On to the next one.

As end-users of technology, we’re all used to receiving software updates in predictable cycles. It is all but business as usual. New tools, usability enhancements, productivity and performance gains? Yes, please, bring them on. More importantly though, keep bringing them on.

This audience understands product roadmaps, release cycles and content lifecycle. And this blog is about more than just what’s new. It’s about how and why it matters. A new release is never just a dot on the timeline or a soon-to-be chronological reference. At the best of times, it’s a story about continued innovation.

The Sitefinity Platform: CMS to DXP

The proliferation of digital technology has enabled customers to interact with brands with unprecedented ease and frequency. This transformation has been fueling demand for personalized experiences and instant outcomes, prompting businesses to adapt and be agile, data-driven and customer-centric.

To respond to changes in consumer behavior and meet evolving customer expectations, brands and organizations have been forced to adapt and accelerate content creation and publishing, streamline multichannel delivery and prioritize personalized, highly relevant experiences.

New consumer technologies, emerging channels and touchpoints, different customer preferences—digital transformation just won’t stop putting every modern business and organization to the test. Quite fittingly, the growing complexity of the challenge is calling for solutions that—first and foremost—are less complex.

The need for agility in both mindset and toolset has been driving us too. Sitefinity has come a long way from a classic CMS solution to a true digital experience platform by migrating to the cloud, decoupling presentation from content, tapping AI, enabling rich enterprise connectivity and customer data modeling.

Of course, content management is still very much in Sitefinity’s DNA, but next-generation digital experiences require next-generation tools and technologies, which have been carefully and thoughtfully added to the platform with every new release.

Modern, Easy-to-Use DX Capabilities

Technology should be an enabler, not a blocker. What your DXP can do is of course important, but the questions of how quickly, how easily and at what cost should also be top of mind. Are your tools serving the modern business practitioner, enabling them to respond to business needs fast, and create and publish content independently? Is your technology adaptable to the unique business requirements of your enterprise with tools and frameworks developers will want to use?

We’re witnessing a prominent shift from technology-driven to business-driven digital solutions. Although traditionally the domain of IT, marketers are readily assuming greater responsibility for technology. This is not only natural but also necessary, as web and digital are increasingly driving the brand to customer experience.

No matter if your job description is writing content or code, the right tools can make a difference across the entire value chain. Better, faster, smarter technology and modern, business-friendly, easy-to-use tools drive desired outcomes and enable multiple teams across the organization to do more with less—there’s your right-fit digital experience platform.

Ease of use for hands-on, day-to-day users should always be the benchmark. Not only are these roles creating content and building customer-facing solutions and experiences, they’re also closely involved in implementation and ongoing maintenance, where speed and efficiency are critical.

A practitioner-friendly DXP is one that offers advanced tools and features with minimal overhead and external dependencies, flexibility in setting up and deployment (SaaS, PaaS, on-premises) and straightforward integration and interoperability, enabling users to be self-sufficient and confident in doing their job.

Organizations deploying digital experiences to drive engagement, conversion and loyalty need quick and quality content turnaround across multiple channels, audiences and geographies. The right platform will enable the right roles to independently self-serve.

Marketers and business users need the tools to build pages, layouts, create and publish large volumes of content, and orchestrate entire campaigns without IT support. Personalization and audience segmentation capabilities need to be natively and easily accessible. User behavior and engagement analytics should draw on multiple data sources within a connected MarTech ecosystem.

Technical roles, on the other hand, want to confidently employ the latest technologies to build and deploy faster. Focus on solutions, not maintenance, with Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Integration-as-a-Service and native support for multiple frontend technologies. Reduce maintenance overhead, streamline operations and lower cost of ownership with a modern, future-proof tech stack and architecture that can operationalize administration and maintenance, and safeguard company assets and customer data.

Sitefinity 15.1: What’s New

To meet the evolving needs of diverse hands-on users and decision-making roles within the organization, Sitefinity has been refining various tools that can make day-to-day tasks more efficient and effective, while also making sure the underlying technologies are kept up to date and up to scratch.

Historically, the refinement of the business practitioner UI and content management toolset has been paired with modern, high-performing technologies for multichannel content delivery, intelligent connectivity and integrations. The native CDP layer, Sitefinity Insight, has also evolved, offering new capabilities for real time personalization, audience segmentation and relevant, data-rich customer experiences.

The latest Sitefinity 15.1 represents continued investment in superior practitioner experiences and AI-led innovation for higher productivity and faster business outcomes.

The speed at which technology evolves is both a blessing and a curse—today’s hot novelties can quickly become obsolete, pushed aside by the next big thing. So, while feature and function are the obvious attention grabbers, the true worth of a software solution lies in the level of scalability, the long-term ROI against the cost of maintenance, security and upgrades.

Improving the core functionality in key areas of the platform is clearly the immediate objective of every Sitefinity release, while the long-term vision is firmly set on agility, ease of use and time to value, trying to move a little closer to the goal with each new version.

Arriving on the back of a third consecutive inclusion in the Gartner MQ for DXP, Sitefinity 15.1 continues to extend the content and experience management toolset, packing enhancements in key areas including AI, Content Editing and Customer Data Modeling. The novelties available to practitioners are matched by continued refinement of our cloud offerings and ASP.NET Core 8 support.

AI-Assisted Content Classification (Tagging)

Sitefinity 15.1 extends the AI toolset by adding AI-assisted content tagging to the GenAI content authoring introduced in Sitefinity 15. The new set of AI tools is integrated with the rich text editor and available for static content types, dynamic modules and media items. AI suggestions for classification build upon the existing taxonomy and can help hone content performance by boosting discoverability, reusability and relevance.

Page Editing Experience Enhancements

The exposed widget toolbox in the new page editor is a popularly requested feature that can help streamline page editing and expedite publishing. It's a very practical, hands-on enhancement that adds to the platform’s ease of use and practitioner-centric tooling—a welcome lift to content editor experience and productivity.

AI Propensity Scoring for Conversions

The release schedule of Sitefinity Insight is not necessarily tied to that of the core Sitefinity, but the alignment in this release cycle is by no means coincidental. The notable novelties in the native CDP layer include:

• Streamlined rule management for Persona and Lead scores
• More and enriched data export options
• Automatic tracking of outbound clicks
• Improvements to the chatbot-based Insightful Assistant

Sitefinity Insight is also piloting a new capability to automatically identify high/medium/low segments for each conversion. The AI-assisted propensity scoring is available to early adopters and helps refine audience segmentation and pushes users towards a conversion via personalized messaging, relevant content and targeted campaigns.

ASP.NET Core 8 Support

The upgrade to ASP.NET 8 reinforces our commitment to supporting the latest version of the Microsoft framework. ASP.NET Core is the default frontend development option for Sitefinity, while the decoupled platform architecture supports diverse .NET and JS presentation technologies. The latest .NET technology in Sitefinity empowers engineering teams to develop and deploy under any platform of choice and accelerate time to market by leveraging ASP.NET Core 8.

ASP.NET Core and .NET 8 are the future of web solutions and adaptable, customer-centric digital experiences. The latest ASP.NET Core also enables the seamless integration of advanced AI capabilities into these experiences.

Wrap-up

The latest Sitefinity version is all yours. More good staff for developers, content editors and marketers. Higher productivity for organizations that understand the business value of data-rich, personalized customer-centric experiences.

Single-source content management and multichannel content delivery backed by data-driven personalization and automation, built on globally available cloud-native infrastructure. Our take on an all-round digital marketing hub and a platform for developers to deploy digital-first, cross-platform content and UX.

A new Sitefinity release is always a good time to revisit your upgrade planning or resume conversations about moving to the cloud. See What's New and join us for live demos and more product insights, as we unpack Sitefinity 15.1.

And hey, there's never a bad time to think about your customers and how their digital experience will set your brand apart.

Get Started with Sitefinity 15.1