Best Practice Blogshttp://www.sitecore.net/unitedkingdom/Community/Best-Practice-Blogs.aspx

Persona and Personalization http://www.sitecore.net/unitedkingdom/Community/Best-Practice-Blogs/Topics/Persona-and-Personalization.aspx

Taxonomy and Information Architecturehttp://www.sitecore.net/unitedkingdom/Community/Best-Practice-Blogs/Topics/Taxonomy-and-Information-Architecture.aspx

Sitecore Business Optimizationhttp://www.sitecore.net/unitedkingdom/Community/Best-Practice-Blogs/Topics/Sitecore-Business-Optimization.aspx

Landing Pages and Testinghttp://www.sitecore.net/unitedkingdom/Community/Best-Practice-Blogs/Topics/Landing-Pages-and-Testing.aspx

Articles - Digital Marketing Suite (DMS)http://www.sitecore.net/unitedkingdom/Community/Best-Practice-Blogs/Peter-McHannigan/Archive.aspx#archive2012

Part 1. Website engagement Valueshttp://www.sitecore.net/unitedkingdom/Community/Best-Practice-Blogs/Peter-McHannigan/Posts/2012/07/Sitecore-DMS-Where-to-Start-Part-1.aspx

Process

1. Understand the ultimate goal of the website (for example, sign up for recreational services information). This is the macro-goal of the website. Depending how far you want to go you can also define macro goals by customer segment or user persona.

2. Brainstorm the measurable actions that a user could complete on your website before reaching the macro-goal. These are the micro-goals and in project management speak would be called predecessor milestones. It’s important not to get too carried away with the number of micro-goals – five or less is usually enough for starters.

3. Define the sequence in which a user is likely to complete the micro-goals. This is an optional task but helps you assign the relative value of micro-goals; that is, micro-goals that are closer to the macro-goal will have a higher value than those further away.

4. Assign a relative value to each micro-goal. I set the macro-goal as 100 and the smallest / lowest micro-goal as 1 and then order everything else in between. You can have multiple micro-goals with the same value; for example, viewing case studies and your client list could both have a value of 15.

You generally end up with more lower level micro-goals and these all reduce to a single macro-goal (multiple entry point to a single final outcome).

5. Present the goals visually; for example:

Part 2. Digital Relevancy Mapshttp://www.sitecore.net/unitedkingdom/Community/Best-Practice-Blogs/Peter-McHannigan/Posts/2012/07/Sitecore-DMS-Where-to-Start-Part-2.aspx

A digital relevancy map is tool to define and understand the customer journey by user persona and interaction / engagement phase. This is a useful tool when planning a new website or in auditing an existing one to make sure that the required content and call to action functions are in place to support desired customer experiences.

Process:

1. Define the user personas for the website. For example, the community advocate.2. For each persona define the phases of engagement. For example, search, evaluate, decide, buy, and

maintenance & support.3. For each engagement phase, define the persona’s objective content requirements, and the call to action to

take them to the next phase.

For example, in the evaluate phase a new car buyer is seeking to compare cars within a category; to do this they will need a compare car function with summary details for each car, detailed specifications for individual cars, brochures, galleries, and reviews; the call to action could be a find a local dealer button.

4. Present the information in a table; for example:

I also recommend linking your map to your engagement values so that you can track, analyze, and improve your customer engagement in Sitecore DMS

Articles - Taxonomy and Information Architecture

Sitecore: Before the development. Architecture!http://www.sitecore.net/unitedkingdom/Community/Best-Practice-Blogs/Jim-Crosby/Posts/2012/07/Sitecore--Architecture-Importance.aspx

After the requirements gathering phase, the next phase, the content plotting phase, is the most crucial in the development lifecycle of a Sitecore web CMS.

Begin by answering the following questions:

1. What page categories does this website require? 2. How will the website use the content? 3. What kinds of content items exist? 4. What types of content elements will appear consistently on multiple pages (also known as reusable

content)? 5. Where does the aforementioned, reusable content come from? 6. Does the reusable content display different content on different pages? 7. Does the system display content from other systems? 8. How do you integrate the content from the other systems? 9. Is the solution multilingual? If so, does the content on the multilingual versions differ? 10. What kinds of users will have access to the CMS? 11. What website regions or content types will each user have access to?

Developers must answer many more questions when beginning a Sitecore implementation, the above items represent just a few things that the developers need to think about first.

Some of the material the client can provide or generate includes

wireframe documents, requirements documents, functional specifications, technical specifications, design mockups, content specifications and more.

Developers should reference this documentation during the architectural phase of the project to come up with their solution architecture.