According to Gartner, a digital experience platform (DXP) is “an integrated set of technologies designed to enable the composition, management, delivery, and optimization of contextualized digital experiences across multi-experience customer journeys.”
In simpler terms, a DXP enables organizations to create, manage, and deliver seamless, personalized experiences to their customers across various digital channels and touchpoints.
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We’ll highlight the essential features and significant advantages a DXP can provide to help your business thrive in the digital landscape.
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From CMS to WEM to DXP
Digital experience platforms have evolved to address the ever-changing needs of businesses in the digital age. The journey began with content management systems (CMSs) in the late 1980s and early ’90s, which allowed for the creation and management of static, brochure-like content. As the internet grew and the social web emerged, organizations started to deliver dynamic content, requiring more advanced solutions.
These requirements led to web experience management (WEM) systems. These platforms enabled organizations to gather engagement data, create user personas, and deliver more personalized experiences. However, WEM systems were primarily designed for marketing departments, making it difficult to integrate with other essential business systems such as customer relationship management (CRM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP).
After being targeted by marketing efforts, potential customers would visit the website and request a quote. However, due to the limitations of WEM systems, seamlessly transferring these leads and their information to the sales team was challenging, resulting in lost opportunities.
As digital experiences became increasingly crucial for businesses of all sizes and industries, the need for deeper integrations grew. This led to the development of headless, microservices architecture, which offered two significant benefits:
- Seamless integration with other systems, such as CRMs, commerce platforms, and call centers, enabling a more connected experience across all touchpoints. In the insurance company example, this would allow for efficient lead tracking and a smooth transition from marketing to sales.
- Empowering marketers and brands to adopt a more customer-centric, omnichannel approach to delivering digital experiences.
These advancements laid the foundation for the rise of digital experience platforms. DXPs provide a fully integrated customer experience that flows seamlessly across channels and devices throughout the entire customer journey, from initial engagement to post-purchase support. With the power of DXPs, organizations can now deliver consistent, personalized, and compelling digital experiences that drive business growth and customer loyalty.
Types of Digital Experience Platforms
Different types of DXPs emerged over time to cater to different industry use cases. While some DXPs specialize in the pre-purchase journey, others hone in on after-sales care.
The main types of DXPs are:
- CMS
- Portal
- Composable
- Commercial
CMS DXPs
CMS DXPs extend the capabilities of traditional content management systems with the incorporation of analytics and persona-based segmentation. This type of DXP is ideal for customer acquisition, lead nurturing, and delivering personalized promotions. Adobe Experience Manager and Sitecore Web Content Management are examples of CMS DXPs.
Portal DXPs
Portal DXPs are designed to nurture long-term customer relationships after the initial sale. Similar to microsites, portals aggregate personalized content, enabling customers to self-serve. They are particularly useful for commerce experiences that require user login, such as mobile banking.
Portal DXPs provide analytics to help companies track customer loyalty, retention, and engagement. These platforms, primarily designed for fintech and manufacturing businesses, calculate metrics such as customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Score (NPS). Portal DXPs include backend features such as CMS, mobile support, and workflow automation, while some focus mainly on front-end presentation.
Composable DXPs
Composable DXPs refer to a software architecture that allows users to assemble best-of-breed solutions from different vendors. This architecture uses APIs to link microservices (highly specialized and independently deployable software packages) together.
This setup enables businesses to deliver content and digital experiences more flexibly than a single monolithic platform by easily adding new capabilities like voice search. Composable DXPs provide greater agility and adaptability to changing business needs.
Commercial DXPs
Commercial DXPs are primarily used by retail companies to manage services such as shopping carts, checkout, online payments, order fulfillment, and inventory management. They also provide product content delivery for e-commerce web interfaces, ensuring a seamless and engaging shopping experience for customers.
Digital Experience Platform Components
A DXP integrates the following components to deliver seamless, personalized digital customer experiences across multiple channels:
- Content Management System (CMS). The CMS is the foundation of a DXP which enables the creation, management, and delivery of digital content. It provides tools for authoring, editing, and publishing content across various channels, ensuring consistency and ease of use.
- Customer Data Platform (CDP). A CDP collects, unifies, and activates customer data from multiple sources, creating a single, comprehensive view of each customer. This data-driven approach enables personalized experiences, targeted marketing campaigns, and improved customer engagement.
- Analytics and insights incorporate analytics tools to track and measure customer behavior, engagement, and conversion rates. These insights help businesses make data-driven decisions, optimize their digital experience strategies, and continuously improve the customer experience.
- Personalization engine personalization is a core component of a DXP that allows businesses to tailor content, offers, and experiences to individual customers based on their preferences, behavior, and context. This engine leverages customer data and analytics to deliver relevant, targeted experiences in real time.
- Experience optimization often includes tools for testing, experimentation, and optimization, such as A/B testing and multivariate testing. These capabilities enable businesses to continually refine and improve their digital experiences based on real-world performance data.
- Integration and API management. To deliver a truly unified experience, DXPs must integrate with various other systems, such as CRM, e-commerce platforms, and marketing automation tools. API management ensures smooth data flow and interoperability between these systems, enabling a cohesive digital ecosystem.
- Omnichannel delivery delivers consistent experiences across multiple channels, including web, mobile, social, email, and more. This omnichannel approach ensures that customers have a seamless experience, regardless of how they choose to interact with a brand.
- Workflow and collaboration provide tools for streamlining workflows, managing approvals, and facilitating collaboration among teams. This ensures efficient content creation, review, and publication processes, reducing time-to-market and improving overall productivity.
What Are the Benefits of a DXP?
A DXP offers the following benefits to organizations looking to enhance their digital presence and improve user experiences across channels:
- Improved customer experience. DXPs enable organizations to deliver seamless, personalized experiences across multiple digital channels, leading to increased customer engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty.
- Increased efficiency and productivity. With a unified platform for managing digital content and experiences, DXPs streamline workflows and reduce the time and effort required to create, publish, and update content. This way teams can focus on higher-value tasks and accelerate time-to-market.
- Better data management and insights. DXPs integrate customer data from various sources and provide a comprehensive view of customer interactions, behaviors, and preferences.
- Enhanced personalization and targeting. With customer data and analytics, DXPs allow businesses to deliver highly targeted and personalized experiences. This level of personalization leads to increased conversion rates, higher customer lifetime value, and improved overall business results.
- Consistent omnichannel experiences. DXPs ensure that customers have a consistent and seamless experience across channels, including web, mobile, social, and offline channels.
- Flexibility and scalability. DXPs allow organizations to easily add new features, integrate with other systems, and scale their digital capabilities as their needs evolve. This flexibility enables businesses to stay agile and adapt to changing market conditions and customer expectations.
- Improved collaboration and governance. DXPs provide tools for collaboration, workflow management, and content governance, and ensure that teams can work together effectively and maintain brand consistency across all digital touchpoints. This collaboration leads to higher-quality content, faster time-to-market, and reduced risk of errors or inconsistencies.
- Competitive advantage. By delivering exceptional digital experiences, organizations can differentiate themselves from competitors, attract new customers, and build a strong reputation in the market. DXPs provide the tools and capabilities needed to stay ahead of the curve and continuously innovate in the digital space.
DXP implementation is a strategic investment that can deliver significant long-term value to organizations.
4 Ways That DXPs Help Businesses
Here are four ways DXPs can help your business address today’s customers:
- Gain insights
- Become customer-centric
- Integrate best solutions
- Maximize content utilization
Gain Actionable Insights
A DXP integrates your internal operational systems with all your digital channels, including web, mobile, social media, in-store, billboards, customer portals, and e-commerce systems.
This integration enables the capture, processing, and profiling of customer data, providing you with a comprehensive view of the customer lifecycle.
When your customer service team handles a disgruntled tweet, they’ll have access to the customer’s history. Similarly, your sales department can view a potential customer’s individual interests and lead score before making a call.
Become Customer-Centric
By connecting your DXP with internal systems, you can monitor customers, map their journey, and identify critical bottlenecks. This enables you to redesign your business practices and optimize your efforts.
This approach is precisely how today’s market disruptors and industry leaders operate: by delivering an exceptional customer experience.
Integrate Best-of-Breed Solutions
Companies often employ best-of-breed technology selected for specific use cases. As an open platform, a DXP can seamlessly connect to these solutions without integration issues or data inconsistencies.
This flexibility allows you to replace or upgrade individual marketing tools as needed, making your marketing agile and enabling you to scale your personalization efforts in manageable increments.
Maximize Content Utilization
A DXP enables you to orchestrate your content to drive reuse across multiple environments by separating the presentation layer from the content and its metadata.
With a DXP, your content becomes adaptable, fitting each container completely and appropriately. This means your content investments will generate better results.
This benefit can be valuable for both B2C and B2B businesses. Across all industries, B2B companies face the demand to make B2B shopping as seamless as B2C. Like B2C, B2B shopping behavior will continue to be influenced by digital advancements.
A DXP helps both B2B and B2C companies create a seamless customer experience that fosters stronger customer connections and brand loyalty.
How to Choose a Digital Experience Platform
The right DXP will have a significant impact on your organization’s digital success. Here are some key factors to consider when selecting a DXP:
Identify Your Business Requirements
Begin by clearly defining your business goals, target audience, and the types of digital experiences you want to deliver. Determine which features and capabilities are essential to meet your specific needs, such as core technologies, content management, personalization, analytics, or e-commerce integration.
Evaluate Integration Capabilities
Consider how well the DXP integrates with your existing technology stack, including CRM, marketing automation, ERP, and other systems. Seamless integration is crucial for creating a unified customer view and delivering consistent experiences across touchpoints.
Assess Scalability and Flexibility
Evaluate the DXP’s ability to scale and adapt to your organization’s growth and changing requirements. Look for a platform with a modular approach that allows you to easily add new features, integrate with emerging technologies, and customize workflows to fit your business processes.
Consider User Experience and Ease of Use
Assess the DXP’s user interface and ease of use for both content creators and administrators. A user-friendly platform with intuitive tools and workflows can significantly improve productivity, reduce training time, and encourage adoption across your organization.
Analyze Personalization and Analytics Capabilities
Investigate the DXP’s personalization and analytics features. Look for advanced segmentation, real-time personalization, A/B testing, and robust analytics capabilities that can help you gain insights into customer behavior and optimize your digital experiences.
Evaluate Content Management Capabilities
Assess the DXP’s content management features, including content creation, editing, versioning, and publishing workflows. Consider how well the platform handles different content types, such as text, images, videos, and rich media, and its ability to deliver content across multiple channels.
Examine Security and Compliance
Ensure that the DXP meets your organization’s security and compliance requirements, such as GDPR, CCPA, or industry-specific regulations. Look for features like role-based access control, data encryption, and audit trails to maintain the security and integrity of your digital experiences.
Consider Total Cost of Ownership
Evaluate the total cost of ownership, including licensing, implementation, training, and ongoing maintenance costs. Consider the long-term value the DXP can provide in terms of increased efficiency, customer satisfaction, and revenue growth.
Assess Vendor Support and Ecosystem
Evaluate a vendor’s reputation, financial stability, and commitment to innovation. Consider the level of support and resources they offer, such as documentation, training, and community forums. Additionally, assess the DXP’s ecosystem of partners, developers, and third-party integrations.
A DXP choice is not just about selecting a technology platform; it’s about finding a strategic partner that can support your organization’s digital journey. By carefully evaluating your options and considering these factors, you can choose a DXP that empowers your organization to deliver exceptional digital experiences and achieve your business goals.
DXP Examples
To better understand the capabilities and applications of DXPs, let’s explore some real-world examples of how organizations across various industries are using DXPs to transform their digital experiences.
Examples of digital experience platforms include:
- Optimizely CMS
- Acquia
- Sitecore
- Salesforce
- Bloomreach Commerce Experience Cloud
- Oracle
- SAP
- Liferay Digital Experience Platform
- OpenText
- Adobe Experience Platform
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DXP FAQ
How big is the digital experience platform market?
According to Grand View Research, the global digital experience platform market size was estimated at USD 11.17 billion in 2022 and is expected to reach USD 12.39 billion in 2024. The market is projected to witness a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.9% from 2023 to 2030.
What is the difference between DXP and CDP?
The difference between a DXP and a Customer Data Platform (CDP) lies in their primary functions and architecture. A DXP enables companies to create, manage, and deliver personalized digital experiences across channels, focusing on the user experience aspect. In contrast, a CDP is designed to collect, manage, and analyze customer data, providing a unified customer view across all touchpoints.
DXPs are built on a microservices architecture, allowing for rapid deployment and updates, while CDPs often use a traditional three-tier architecture for batch processing of data.
Is WordPress a DXP?
WordPress is a content management system (CMS), not a DXP. With plugins and extended functions, it can be made to offer DXP-like functionality.
Do I need a DXP?
Whether you need a Digital Experience Platform (DXP) depends on your business goals, the complexity of your digital ecosystem, and your need to provide personalized, integrated experiences across multiple channels.
If your organization aims to improve customer engagement, and operational efficiency, and drive revenue growth through seamless digital experiences, a DXP could be beneficial. It’s particularly relevant for businesses looking to rapidly deploy new applications or update existing ones to meet evolving customer expectations.
How can a DXP help businesses meet the evolving expectations of customers?
A DXP helps businesses meet the evolving expectations of customers by enabling the delivery of seamless, personalized experiences across all digital touchpoints. With real-time data and actionable customer insights, DXPs allow businesses to adapt to changing consumer behavior and market demand, ensuring that digital interactions consistently meet or exceed customer expectations.
How can a composable approach to DXP architecture benefit businesses?
A composable approach to DXP architecture offers businesses the flexibility to easily integrate and customize various digital tools and components. This modular approach enables faster innovation, easier scalability, and better adaptability to changing business needs.
With a composable DXP, businesses can build a tailored suite of tools that best supports their digital strategies, ultimately leading to a higher return on investment and more effective digital experience management.
What role do digital assets and asset management play in a DXP?
Digital assets, such as images, videos, and interactive elements, are crucial components of engaging digital experiences. Effective asset management within a DXP ensures that these digital assets are easily accessible, organized, and consistently used across all channels.
Good digital asset management enables businesses to create cohesive, immersive experiences that captivate customers and drive engagement across various touchpoints, including web, mobile, and social media platforms.
Further Reading
How to use voice technology to improve CX?
What are private colocation data centers?
UCaaS for small and medium businesses
Why integrate UCaaS with business apps?
POTS vs. VoIP: what’s the difference?
Resources
Best Digital Experience Platforms Reviews 2024. (n.d.). Gartner. Retrieved March 7, 2024, from https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/digital-experience-platforms
Digital Experience Platform Market Size & Share Report, 2030. (n.d.). Grand View Research. Retrieved March 7, 2024, from https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/digital-experience-platform-market
