Salesforce experience vs salesforce site - Explain.

552 Asked by ColemanGarvin in Salesforce , Asked on Jun 6, 2024

A client of mine has a website and a public domain that they have right now that is strictly informational. There are various tools such as a Store Finder Tool, Appointment Booking and Web-to-Case creation.

The client uses Salesforce heavily and is looking to 'decommission' the website and build the content on the salesforce platform. They wanted to use an experience/community, develop the UI using assets and various custom lightning web components and then have their domain point to the Salesforce experience site. At some point in the future, they envision turning this into a Customer Community where the customer can login, see their orders and pay.

For now, there would be no login functionality for customers / partners and this site would be fully publicly accessible.

I have looked and am having trouble getting a clear answer on the following:

What is the better way to move forward with the website migration, should I create a new Experience Site, develop lightning components or should I create a new Site and use Visual force pages to style the site and create pages?

Is there any way to grab their current pages and reuse them, or would I have to design the site from the ground up?

Help and guidance from the community is appreciated. I have done a lot of research but I am still hesitant that creating an Experience is the right / most efficient decision?

Answered by Aashna Saito

The main difference between the two is that salesforce Sites exposes Visualforce and Apex directly, while Experience utilises a useful WYSIWYG-type editor. In other words, you can pretty much copy-paste the site into an Experience, and even define navigation, pages, etc all with a UI, while a Site is much more code-intensive, less UI. However, given that both are already capable of displaying plain HTML, it probably doesn't really matter which option you choose. They're both decent choices. Ultimately, I guess it depends on how faithful you want to remain to the original site design.

I find it easier to make Visualforce look and feel exactly as I want, as I can just turn off all the styles and do my own HTML. On the other hand, I find the template experience of Experience to be enjoyable, as it gives us ways to make all the pages look uniform and even change global settings, like font colours and such, without having to possibly modify every single Visualforce page.

Without seeing the site, I have no idea which route would actually be preferable. For most sites, it probably doesn't matter which you choose, just pick one and commit. They're about equal in functionality, so it's more about preference, kind of like choosing between jQuery or React. They're two different things, each having their pros and cons, but at the end of the day, they both get the job done.

There is no clear "better" way. It depends on you. Do you like working with raw HTML, or would you like to copy-paste stuff directly from a browser preview/window? Only you can decide that. Experience is more likely to be copy-pasting various parts of the site, while Visualforce is still likely going to need careful treatment of URLs and the like. It's not clear that there's a "winner" here, either way. Going with Sites, you probably want to create at least a template Visualforce page so you can get a consistent look and feel, while in Experiences, you get the look and feel pretty much for free, but you'll potentially have to copy-paste individual sections of the site.

Your Answer

Answer (1)

Ranjana

Salesforce Experience and Salesforce Site are both features within the Salesforce ecosystem that enable organizations to extend their Salesforce functionality beyond the internal users to external audiences. However, they serve different purposes and have distinct characteristics. Here's an explanation of each and their differences:

Salesforce Experience (Experience Cloud)

Salesforce Experience Cloud (formerly known as Salesforce Community Cloud) is a platform that allows organizations to create branded digital experiences for customers, partners, and employees. It provides a comprehensive set of tools to build and manage portals, forums, websites, and mobile apps that integrate seamlessly with Salesforce data.

Key Features of Salesforce Experience:

Branded Communities: Create personalized and branded spaces where users can interact with your company and each other.
User Engagement: Facilitate discussions, provide self-service options, and share knowledge through forums and knowledge bases.
Access Control: Manage permissions and access levels for different types of users (e.g., customers, partners, employees).
Integration: Seamlessly integrate with Salesforce CRM data and other Salesforce features like Service Cloud, Sales Cloud, and more.
Customization: Use Lightning Experience and custom components to tailor the look and feel of your community.
Mobile-Ready: Build responsive designs that work on any device.

Use Cases for Salesforce Experience:

Customer Service Portals: Provide self-service options, submit support tickets, and track the status of requests.
Partner Portals: Collaborate with partners, share leads, and manage joint sales efforts.
Employee Communities: Create internal social networks for employee collaboration and engagement.

Salesforce Site (Force.com Sites)

Salesforce Sites (often referred to as Force.com Sites) allows you to create public-facing websites that are directly integrated with your Salesforce organization. Unlike Experience Cloud, Sites are typically used for simpler, unauthenticated web pages that need to interact with Salesforce data.

Key Features of Salesforce Sites:

Public Access: Create web pages that can be accessed by anyone on the internet without requiring a login.

Data Integration: Display and collect data from Salesforce using Visualforce pages, Apex code, and Lightning components.
Custom Domain: Host your website on a custom domain.
Security: Control what data can be accessed and ensure secure interactions with Salesforce data.
Forms and Surveys: Create web forms to collect information from visitors and store it directly in Salesforce.

Use Cases for Salesforce Sites:

Public Information Pages: Provide general information about your company, products, or services.
Event Registration: Collect event registrations and manage them in Salesforce.
Lead Collection: Create landing pages to capture leads and automatically enter them into Salesforce.

Key Differences

Target Audience:

Salesforce Experience: Designed for authenticated users like customers, partners, and employees who need a personalized experience and access to specific Salesforce data.
Salesforce Site: Intended for public access where authentication is not required, suitable for simple interactions with Salesforce data.

Functionality:

Salesforce Experience: Offers a robust set of features for engagement, collaboration, and personalization, including forums, knowledge bases, and complex workflows.
Salesforce Site: Focuses on simple, public-facing content and interactions, typically using Visualforce or Lightning components for data integration.

Customization:

Salesforce Experience: Highly customizable with templates, themes, and advanced Lightning components.
Salesforce Site: Customizable through Visualforce and Apex, but generally used for simpler pages and forms.

Use Cases:

Salesforce Experience: Best for building rich, interactive communities and portals for specific user groups.
Salesforce Site: Best for creating public web pages that require minimal interaction with Salesforce data.

In summary, Salesforce Experience is ideal for creating rich, interactive communities and portals for authenticated users, while Salesforce Site is suited for public-facing websites that require simple interactions with Salesforce data without user authentication.

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