Sitecore 9 Forms, S4S and Channels

The Sitecore to Salesforce integration, S4S, supports the new Sitecore 9 Experience Forms (see LinkedIn article). A popular S4S feature is surfacing Sitecore website analytics in Salesforce lead and contact records. One of these analytic data morsels is channel data.

Channels are the various ways that visitors arrive at your website and the flow of visitors through channels is called 'traffic'. The most common channels are:

• Referral traffic is when visitors arrive after clicking a link on another website. Referrals are tracked by Sitecore and show which external sources are valuable to your business
• Organic search traffic arrives after a visitor uses a search engine like Google or Bing
• Direct traffic arrives when a user enters a URL into their browser or uses a bookmark to directly access the site. Other direct traffic includes:
  • Clicking a simple link in an email
  • Clicking a link from a Microsoft Office or PDF document
  • Accessing the site from a shortened URL (depending on the URL shortener)
  • Clicking a simple link from mobile social media apps that do not pass referrer information
• See more traffic channels on sitecore.com

So why surface this information in Salesforce? Its key value is showing the effort that visitors have taken to find your website, and this often relates to their enthusiasm. The volume of channel traffic is also an indication of the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. For example, if you spent 80% of your budget on Google Ads but your busiest channel is direct traffic, this indicates your AdWords are not effective.

Learn more about using Sitecore analytics to help the sales team better identify their prospects on our S4S page.