Modern vs. Classic experiences in SharePoint have been quite the buzz. Let’s start by explaining what we mean by Modern SharePoint experiences. If you’re not familiar with the differences, take a moment to check out our webinar on the topic. As a quick recap, when we say Modern SharePoint Experiences we’re specifically talking about Communication Sites and Modern Team Sites.  
 
Many of our clients have faced the difficult decision of whether to go with modern or classic SharePoint experiences for their SharePoint driven portals and projects. In most cases, PixelMill recommends going modern whenever possible. However, there are some drawbacks to modern that makes classic and/or a hybrid of the two a better solution—branding capabilities being the most compelling reason as of late. Those rare circumstances aside, modern experiences bring high value to you and your team and are continuing to improve with new features almost daily.  
 
Remember, your SharePoint solution is built for your users. To state the obvious, their adoption of the tool is crucial. We have found 4 ways SharePoint Modern Experiences increase user adoption. 

1. Modern Experiences provide a better viewing experience 

Out of the box, modern experiences give your users a clean, beautiful, and mobile-ready interface. When compared with classic experiences, the modern site user experience is more established and there is an emphasis on the components of value, such as a highlighted news webpart, a highlighted content web part, a hero web part, and a commenting feature on pages that provides a way for users to interact with the content.

Modern has also been embraced by the PnP community and as a result also has more pre-built components from the open source community. Plus, since the modern experience is natively responsive giving your team access to their tool on any device, anytime, anywhere.  

2. Empowered content authors build trust with the end-user 

Content is King—compelling content is a main driver in user adoption. Modern experiences empower everyone to be a content author. Your users come to your site because they need information.  Outdated, stale content that is difficult to update translates to lower adoption because the users don’t trust that your solution will deliver what they need.  

Modern experiences make it easier for content authors to create rich (imagery and video), compelling content, giving your end-users more relevant, important content. When users know that what they need will be readily available, you foster trust between the author and content consumer.   

New features include strong rich text editing webparts, the ability to copy and paste images directly onto the page, drag, drop, and reorder content zones on the page, and a whole new litany of modern webparts.  

3. List and library interface is cleaner, more rich, and compelling 

Modern experiences make using general lists and library content easier. Sharing is also more straightforward and robust with modern SharePoint.  

If you also use OneDrive, syncing is easier with modern as well.  

On-demand syncing is a huge time-saver if you need offline access. You can configure it to keep a specific folder or file on a specific device and share from your device without ever having to go to SharePoint.  

4. Modern Experiences Provides Extensibility  

Intranets and portals should bring in as many tools as possible to help your team collaborate and communicate more effectively without having to bounce between solutions. Modern experiences make it easier to bring your own line-of-business applications into one location. Plus, if OOTB webparts don’t exist for your specific use-case, it’s much easier to build and customize webparts using the SharePoint Framework—a better model than previous experiences.  

Bottom line? Modern experiences are easier to use for admins, content authors, and the end-user. This accessibility translates to an increase in user adoption and your ROI. 
 
Are you ready to drive adoption by embracing modern experiences? Still need convincing? Need help planning and strategizing, including custom development? PixelMill is here for you, let’s chat today!