What is a Digital Experience Platform and Why Do I Need One?
A digital experience platform (DXP) refers to a set of integrated tools businesses use to manage the digital experience from end to end. In bringing all these functionalities together, the buyer is looking to drive efficiencies in creating and managing digital experiences for their customers and prospects.
Furthermore, buyers are looking to maximize the impact of these experiences. By understanding the impact of campaigns, they can better serve the needs of their visitors, who, in turn, become loyal customers.
Should you opt for a composable solution made up of best-of-breed components or for an all-in-one platform that provides all the features your marketing and development teams will need? This is a key decision enterprise customers must make in order to select their next digital experience platform (DXP).
However, there are several more decisions to make, features to consider, and potential pitfalls that can trip up decision-makers. In this article, we’ll answer some of those questions and highlight where to focus when evaluating DXPs.
The Must-Have Tool for Managing Digital Experiences
Catering to the many digital touchpoints where customers and enterprises engage can be challenging. At these touchpoints, customer interactions happen, spanning an assortment of channels from websites and mobile devices to email and social media platforms.
These interactions need to be created, orchestrated, tracked, optimized, and managed if a business is to have a chance against the competition. That’s where the business justification for moving to a modern DXP becomes evident.
With a DXP, organizations can meet many of the demands being placed on them by market conditions and customer expectations, including:
- Omnichannel Delivery: A DXP should be capable of delivering content to multiple channels where customers and enterprises interact — those currently in use, like websites and mobile apps; those ripe for an explosion in usage, like AR and VR; and those yet to be created.
- Improved Connectivity: A DXP connects the entire MarTech stack, pulling data from one tool and sharing it with another so businesses can adequately orchestrate and optimize the customer journey for the best results.
- Coping with the Growing Importance of DX: Customers expect businesses to get the digital experience right since brands such as Apple, Netflix and others have already set the bar. From increased personalization to more speed, a DXP offers the solution to help enterprises cope.
Read More About DXPs: How Composable DXP Connects You To the Best Tools for Business Success
Features to Look for When Shortlisting a DXP
Deciding between the type of DXP is one of the choices that need to be made, whether composable, which connects the best-of-breed tools via APIs, or the suite option, which provides a multi-pronged solution that offers content management, personalization, digital asset management, CRM and more.
However, regardless of your DXP’s architecture, some key features should be considered.
- Headless Content Management: A DXP that doesn’t offer headless content management capabilities is a legacy solution limiting what marketers and developers can create. By going headless, a DXP can offer the omnichannel support companies need to reach their customers on different channels. It also allows developers to use their preferred frameworks and technologies to create experiences.
- Analytics: Marketers, customer success, and sales teams are just a portion of the team members who can benefit from the analytics capabilities of a DXP. Whether they come built-in or via an easy integration to leading third-party vendors, having analytics is crucial to connecting the entire digital experience and making the best strategic decisions for the business.
- Personalization: The demand for personalization has reached a point where customers expect it rather than hope for it. Personalization, in reality, is more than a feature. However, a robust DXP should still offer the capability, whether built-in or by integrating with a personalization engine or other tool that can help to enhance it.
- Flexible APIs: Developers don’t want to spend all their time working to create the integrations for every tool in the MarTech stack. A DXP should offer flexible APIs, such as RESTful or GraphQL, to make the platform easier for developers.
- Security: Since maintaining data integrity and privacy has become essential to the modern enterprise and its customers, enterprise-grade security and compliance are necessary for any DXP. This includes capabilities such as single sign-on (SSO), compliance certifications, and more.
- Workflow Support: For content teams to properly manage the different aspects of the digital experience customer journey, a DXP should offer workflow support in the form of content workflows and scheduling capabilities.
- Commerce: Enterprises need the ability to sell and promote products, so a DXP should offer commerce capabilities. While even in a suite DXP, commerce functionality will need to be integrated, the DXP should support headless commerce to enable businesses to offer shopping experiences on multiple channels.
- Interoperability: As the tools and technologies that make up the MarTech stack change every few years, a DXP must be interoperable. This provides the future-proof enablement enterprises need today to add other features and easily integrate new tools when required.
- Generative AI: The AI revolution is upon us and can be valuable for teams tasked with creating digital experiences. A DXP that leverages generative AI to aid content creation speed and workflows could be valuable to enterprises in support of creating more relevant content.
Pitfalls That Could Trap DXP Buyers
Knowing the bare minimum features required of a modern DXP can help organizations avoid selecting the wrong platform. However, some potential issues might entrap DXP buyers when they peel back the sticker price.
Unexpectedly High TCOs
The total cost of ownership of a DXP isn’t always a simple calculation. However, enterprises need to be careful that these costs don’t spiral out of control due to high licensing costs as well as integration or implementation issues that can appear, even before they get to use all of the features the DXP offers.
Vendor Lock-in
Another challenge to beware of is the issue of vendor lock-in. This can occur if the DXP struggles to integrate with other systems in your existing technology stack or other tools you want to implement soon.
Variable CMS Costs
Organizations might opt for a headless CMS to sit at the center of their technology stack and integrate with other tools. However, every platform is different, and DXP buyers should know that different vendors will have variable costs based on for example how many API calls are made per month or the number of content entries they have.
Hosting and Deployment Options
Enterprises also need to assess their deployment options when selecting a DXP. Depending on their industry or business (IT security policy) requirements, on-premises might be required, whereas, for others, a SaaS solution might be the best fit. DXP buyers will need to assess whether the platform they choose offers the flexibility to fit their needs.
Lack of a Partner Ecosystem
Another potential pitfall to DXP buyers could be the lack of a partner ecosystem from their chosen vendor. Having access to partners in their geographic location to make implementation and offer ongoing support is important for any enterprise.
Training and Change Management
After deciding on a new DXP, enterprises will also need to transform to ensure they reach their goals. Training and change management shouldn’t be avoided to maximize the benefit of any new system, understand how to use it, and define the processes for optimal use.
Supporting the DXP Buyer’s Journey
The DXP buyer’s journey can be complicated. But reaching the end with the ideal solution for your business will bring many competitive advantages.
Content Bloom Is an established partner for a number of large, recognized brands and can provide the digital experience expertise needed to evaluate, select and implement the right DXP. Our knowledge of CMSs, headless implementation, and digital marketing know-how has been honed over the years, and it is precisely what you need in a partner to take your digital experience to the next level.
With an assortment of headless CMS and DXP partners, we can help your business navigate any uncertainty and help you better serve your customers.
Ready to find your next DXP? Contact us to learn more.
