Salesforce Experience Cloud (also known as Salesforce Community Cloud) is a digital experience platform. It helps businesses deliver connected digital experiences quickly. With it, they can reinvent the customer experience, engage more customers, and accelerate growth across any industry with data-driven sites, portals, and mobile applications. When you create an Experience Cloud site, you start a Salesforce Experience Cloud community. It gives customers, partners, and employees a platform to connect, collaborate, and share knowledge and files. As a result, it can help your business grow. You can achieve a lot when you build and customize an Experience Cloud site. This includes various solutions, maximized flexibility and customization, third-party integrations, and efficient content management.
Salesforce Experience Cloud Statistics
- Companies that switch to Salesforce will see a 25% increase in marketing ROI and a 25% boost in revenue growth.
- Salesforce Experience Cloud is known as the fastest-growing product having a 158% year-over-year growth rate in Quarter 2 of 2021.
- Salesforce has over 150,000 customers across every major vertical.
This article guides you on how to build and customize an Experience Cloud site to create a community that matches your brand. First, we cover the step-by-step process of building your Experience Cloud site. Then we give troubleshooting techniques to help you reach your desired customer portal. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced user, you will find the information you need. So, if you want to learn more about Salesforce Experience Cloud and how it can help your business grow, keep on reading!
A Guide to the Salesforce Experience Cloud Community (Salesforce Community Cloud)
Getting Started
Salesforce Experience Cloud lets companies create and manage digital experiences for their customers, partners, and employees. It is part of the Salesforce Platform and provides a unified view of customer data across all channels.
Three types of communities can be built using Salesforce Experience Cloud
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Customer Community is designed to provide self-service support to customers
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Partner Relationship Management is used to collaborate with partners on opportunities and deals
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External Apps are used to build custom applications for external users.
To create a Salesforce Experience Cloud Site, you will need a Salesforce account and access to the Salesforce Platform. You will also need to have a clear understanding of your business requirements and goals for the site.
Salesforce Experience Cloud provides a range of tools and software to help you create a site. Experience Builder is a drag-and-drop tool that lets you create custom pages and components for your site. Salesforce CMS is a content management system that lets you create and manage content for your site. You can also use Salesforce CRM to manage customer data and integrate it with your site.
Salesforce Experience Cloud Implementation: Step-by-Step Instructions
Enable Digital Experiences in your Salesforce.org
Before you can create an Experience Cloud site, you need to enable Digital Experiences in your Salesforce org. To do this, go to ‘Setup’ and search for ‘Digital Experiences’. Click on ‘Settings’ and then click on ‘Enable Digital Experiences’. Select the checkbox for naming the domain name. Choose your domain name very carefully, because you cannot change it once you create it. After finalizing your domain name, click on ‘Save’. You can now create several communities based on your license.
Create a new Experience Cloud site
Once you have enabled Digital Experiences, you can create a new Experience Cloud site. To do this, go to ‘Setup’ and search for ‘Digital Experiences’. Click on ‘Experience Builder’ and then click on ‘New’. Select a template that best suits your preference and click on ‘Create’.
Remember: If you own numerous communities, you can only create one community without a custom URL. Although the communities share the same domain name, each has its own unique URL path. Once you create your community in Salesforce.org, Salesforce takes you directly to the community workspace. In this workspace you can create and modify community pages and their interface. You can also manage community members from here.
Salesforce Experience Cloud Implementation
Once you have created your site, you can test it to make sure it works as expected. To do this, go to ‘Experience Builder’ and click on ‘Preview’. Test your site to make sure everything works as expected. Once you are happy with your site, you can launch it. To do this, go to ‘Experience Builder’ and click on ‘Publish’.
Now, you’re all set!
Configuring Your Experience Cloud Community to Match Your Brand
Customizing your Experience Cloud Site to match your company’s branding can be advantageous in several ways. It helps to create a consistent and professional look and feel for your site, which can help to build trust with your customers. It can also help to differentiate your site from competitors and make it more memorable. Finally, when you build and customize an Experience Cloud site, you reinforce your brand identity and messaging, which can help to increase brand awareness and loyalty.
By using Experience Builder’s theme panel, you can ensure that your site looks perfect on every device. Here are some customizations that you can easily achieve:
Define your site’s branding and theme
You can customize your site’s branding and theme to match your company’s branding. To do this, go to ‘Experience Builder’ and click on ‘Branding’. Upload your logo and other images, and customize the colors and even the fonts to match your brand.
Create custom pages and components using Experience Builder
You can use Experience Builder to create custom pages and components for your site. To do this, go to ‘Experience Builder’ and click on ‘Pages’. Click on ‘New Page’ to create a new page, and use the drag-and-drop interface to add components to your page. If you want a more customized experience, you can create custom pages, add components to pages, build custom Lightning components, and expose more Salesforce objects.
Manage your site’s pages
The Pages and Page Action menus centralize all your page-related needs, from page creation to audience criteria-based page visibility and everything in between. Click on ‘Pages’ in the left-hand menu. Use the Pages and Page Action menus to manage your pages.
Add content to your site using Salesforce CMS
You can use Salesforce CMS to add content to your site. To do this, go to ‘Experience Builder’ and click on ‘CMS’. Click on ‘New’ to create a new piece of content, and use the drag-and-drop interface to add components to your content. Customize the components to match your brand and style.
Integrate your site with Salesforce CRM to manage customer data
You can integrate your site with Salesforce CRM to manage customer data. To do this, go to ‘Experience Builder’ and click on ‘Settings’. Click on ‘Salesforce CRM’ and then click on ‘Connect to Salesforce’. Follow the prompts to connect your site to Salesforce CRM.
Improve site performance
You can analyze your Experience Cloud site’s volume, traffic, and transaction loads to determine if your site could benefit from the many performance optimization tools available. Click on ‘Performance’ in the left-hand menu. Use the tools to analyze your site’s performance.
Troubleshooting Your Salesforce Experience Cloud Community Site
When building and customizing from Digital Experience in Salesforce, some common issues that may arise include:
Poor data quality
Poor data quality can seriously hurt business operations, particularly in data-intensive systems such as Salesforce. Inaccurate data can lead to wrong reports and poor decisions. Also, manual data checking and correction reduce productivity. To avoid this, establish data quality guidelines, train users, use validation rules, regularly cleanse data, and consider third-party data sources.
Neglecting data security
Data security is critical for any business, and Salesforce is no exception. Having poor data security can lead to data breaches, which can be damaging to your business as well as add to cost. Establish data security guidelines, train users, and use Salesforce’s built-in security features
Poorly designed workflow rule
Poorly designed workflow rules can lead to inefficiencies and errors in your business processes. Design your workflow rules carefully, test them thoroughly, and refine them as needed.
Underutilizing Salesforce automation features
Salesforce offers many automation features that can save time and increase efficiency. Underutilizing these features can lead to inefficiencies and lost opportunities. Explore Salesforce’s automation features and use them to their full potential.
Real-World Applications and Examples on Using the Salesforce Experience Cloud:
Salesforce Experience Cloud is customizable platform that offers various functionalities, allowing businesses to create communities that match their specific needs. Here are some examples of how businesses have used Experience Cloud to create communities:
Bond Membership Organization
Bond Membership Organization effectively handles more than 4,000 users in their community. They use the platform to create a partner portal to boost sales. The Experience cloud also allows collaboration between vendors and partners resulting to easier, faster, and more effective transactions.
The American Heart Association
The American Heart Association built a community to connect with their volunteers, donors, and supporters. They use the platform to engage with their members, volunteers, and donors, as well as enhance their fundraising efforts to raise more money for their organization.
The University of Arizona
The University of Arizona created a community to connect with their students, faculty, and staff. They use the platform to provide a self-service portal to optimize monotonous business processes and provide faster and better customer service.
Businesses that use Experience Cloud to create communities can benefit from a number of advantages. By creating a community, businesses can connect with their customers, partners, and employees in a more meaningful way. This can result to increased loyalty and retention rates. Experience Cloud allows businesses to provide self-service portals and help centers, which can help customers find answers to their questions fast. Experience Cloud can also help businesses boost sales by creating partner portals and enhancing their fundraising efforts. These are just a few examples of the benefits that businesses can see from using Experience Cloud to create communities. The Experience Cloud is highly customizable, so businesses can create their communities to meet their specific needs and goals
Conclusion
In conclusion, Salesforce Experience Cloud is a platform that offers a wide range of functionalities, allowing businesses to create communities that match their specific needs. Businesses that use Experience Cloud to create communities can benefit from increased engagement, improved customer service, enhanced collaboration, increased revenue, and optimized business processes. The platform is highly customizable, so businesses can tailor their communities to meet their specific needs and goals.
We encourage readers to try Experience Cloud for themselves and explore the many benefits it has to offer. To learn more about Experience Cloud and how to create a Salesforce Experience Cloud community, visit the Salesforce website. You can also explore our other articles on the Zehntech blog.
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