This is a simple guide about how to connect your external site (non-Sitecore site) and manage it from Sitecore. This tutorial will show you a brief demo about what we can do using this cool feature.
The Federated Experience Manager is an out-of-the-box application that allows you to add new components to the current site, track visitor interactions and generate analytics information.
If you want more information about Sitecore FXM, please visit the documentation page.
In the LaunchPad, let’s identify this module:
Once we’ve clicked to open the module, you will see the console where we can manage all our external sites. Let’s click on “Add external website” in order to register a new external site.
I will use a non-Sitecore local site to add to our FXM: In this case I will register externalsite.local wich is a default web application.
In order to register the site, we have to set the domain and copy the generated script.
The Generated Script will be pasted in the <head> section of the external site.
Once we’ve saved changes and published we will receive a notification (marked in the image below) that will say: “JavaScript beacon was found on external website” which means that Sitecore recognized the script and everything is all set so we can start working with the site and start tracking visitor information.
Now, we can check if the external site can be managed from Sitecore.
1. Add Placeholder
The first thing I want to show you is the “Add Placeholder” option. With it, you can add personalized content on the external site. For instance, you can create a carousel or a banner and insert into a page.
Let’s click on “Add after” and a window dialog will be presented. here we can add a name of the placeholder and we must select the parent Item.
In this case we are going to add a Callout Rendering, which is a custom rendering that will have some information. (For this demo I hard-coded the content).
Once we’ve selected the rendering, the page will be updated automatically and we can see how it looks. 
We need to publish our changes in order to see them reflected on the external site (see image below)
2. Capture Click Action
Add capture click actions to trigger an action when the user clicks any element on the external site. We can assign goals, events or outcomes to a HTML element and keep track of all the information a visitor generates.
In this case, we will add a new action to the “Learn More” button. Same as we did for the placeholder, let’s hover the mouse over the button and a the option will appear.
At the moment we click to add a new option, we have to add a name a select the parent item.
Then we are going to select a goal: Learn More.
Remember that we can assign campaigns, events, etc but those items must be created first.
After some tests clicking on the button, let’s see the report on the Experience Analytics module. First, we need to select the Demo site (which refers to the external site)
And then we should verify if the goal was triggered everytime the visitor clicked on the “Lear More” button. As we can see in the report, we successfully assigned the action to the button and the data is being tracked.
There is also an option for “Add page filter” that can be used to target the current page or children. If you want more information about this feature, please visit the Sitecore Documentation about it.
….aaannndd that’s it for now. I hope you’ve understood this feature that Sitecore introduced from version 8.0. See you later!
Happy Sitecoring 😉
CMS Xperience 