Digital experience is the term used to describe the interactions between a customer and a business through digital technologies. These interactions can occur on various platforms such as websites, mobile apps, social media content, and email campaigns.

With today's customers interacting across numerous channels, businesses need to provide experiences that are both consistent and unified. If they fail to prioritize customer experience, their relevance and revenue may quickly diminish. This highlights the importance of Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs).

DXP defined

A Digital Experience Platform, or DXP, is an integrated software framework designed for engaging a wide array of audiences through digital touchpoints. Companies use DXPs to build, deploy, continually improve websites, portals, mobile apps, and other digital experiences. This tool manages the complex task of data management and user experience, ensuring the entire digital customer journey is taken into account. With a DXP at the core of your digital strategy, you can manage all digital customer experiences efficiently across multiple touchpoints.

The Role of DXPs in Modern Digital Experience

An increasingly digitized world demands more from digital experiences. Simply delivering content over web pages and applications is not enough to meet customer demands today. Modern customers crave personalized, connected experiences across all types of platforms. This is where DXPs come in. They are designed to supercharge the way customer experiences are delivered across different channels and interconnected devices.

The Essential Components of a DXP

A modern DXP is open, intelligent, and equipped with several tools and capabilities for optimizing and personalizing digital experiences. The critical components are its strong foundation in data, which enables it to scale personalized digital experiences. With a solid understanding of customers and products at its core, a DXP is a dynamic tool that continues to shape the future of digital customer experiences.

While the sphere of Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs) is still emerging, there are several common elements that many of these platforms share:

• Content Management - Content lies at the heart of digital interactions, so it's expected to find Content Management System (CMS) capabilities in most DXPs. These platforms help centralize an organization's content, which can then be deployed across multiple touchpoints like websites, blogs, mobile apps, social media, or even IoT devices.
• Digital Asset Management - This functionality closely aligns with content management, as it helps manage digital assets like images, videos, and audio files, serving as their central repository, which can then be utilized as needed. DXPs leverage cloud-based solutions for scalability according to user demands.
• E-commerce Features - As commerce forms the basis of business, DXPs facilitate this process by offering e-commerce capabilities, streamlining transitions, payment acceptance, and order tracking on the web.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - DXPs also play a role in CRM, keeping track of customer data to foster long term relationships and provide personalized experiences for every customer.
• Insights, Analytics & Intelligence - Modern DXPs offer more than just content hosting. They provide valuable insights and analytics about user interactions, employing advanced technologies like big data analysis and content intelligence to provide proactive recommendations and real-time insights.
• Personalization & Automation - Another characteristic of DXPs is their ability to personalize experiences. With the user data they store, DXPs analyze behavioral and first-party data to tailor experiences to each user. Many of these personalized experiences can be automated, supporting marketers in scaling their reach.
• Digital Experimentation - The most sophisticated DXPs incorporate digital experiment features, enabling users to conduct A/B tests on their content and experiences to optimize and reduce the risk from new changes using data-driven decisions.
• APIs and Integrations - Understandably, a single software platform cannot be all-encompassing. Top-tier DXPs offer flexible APIs and an open architecture for easy integration with best-of-breed solutions across different pieces of the DXP technology stack, thus allowing the assembly of a comprehensive digital experience platform tailored to their needs.

DXP vs. CMS: Why DXPs Are More Essential

While a Content Management System (CMS) is still crucial and forms the foundational system for managing content, certain requirements led to the development of the more agile DXP. Unlike CMSs that deliver content over web pages and applications, DXPs deploy the content across numerous channels and devices, ensuring seamless and robust interactions. The DXP's development was a response to marketers' need for an open platform that easily integrates with other systems, enabling them to craft truly personal experiences for customers, something modern companies need more than ever.

The Advantages of Utilizing a DXP

A Digital Experience Platform offers an integrated system that simplifies the complexities often found in handling separate applications. Beyond what a traditional Content Management System (CMS) can offer, DXP connects web content features to diverse functions, which leads to enhanced efficiency and reduced organizational conflicts.

The primary advantages are:

• Enhanced User Experience: A well-orchestrated DXP can significantly improve the speed at which your website loads for visitors. In the event that it includes or is compatible with a Content Delivery Network (CDN), it allows swift content delivery from a proximate server without the requirement for an additional application.
• Simplified Analytics: DXPs simplify the analytics data interpretation process for marketers. Rather than moving data between multiple platforms for analysis, all pertinent information is made available in a single, unified platform.
• Facilitated Headless Architectures: DXPs can efficiently handle headless and hybrid site architectures, reducing the load on the user's device to fetch a particular page. This is yet another way a potent DXP enhances your website's performance.

Explore your DXP options

We’re partnered with 2 of the leading DXP providers in the industry, Magnolia & Adobe.

Finding the right DXP for your company can be a complex endeavor. In part because businesses have more options than ever before, from content-heritage DXPs to DXPs that come from portals or commerce services. No matter what you’re looking for, we’ll be able to find and implement a provider for your specific needs.

Conclusion

Embracing the power of a Digital Experience Platform (DXP) can transform your brand's digital strategy. These platforms are no longer optional for businesses. In a world where customer loyalty is increasingly reliant on digital experiences, DXPs are key to retaining relevance and revenue. They are an essential tool that any modern business should consider integrating into their digital strategy.