Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) provide marketers with a powerful technology stack for helping to create the best digital experiences for their customers.

It is an evolution of traditional web content management systems to better map the entire digital customer lifecycle. This is from content creation to deployment to measurement and iteration.

More importantly, it handles much of the user experience and data management so that digital marketers can focus on customer needs and engagement.

Forrester defines DXP as software that provides the foundation for flexible, agnostic core services to maximise scale, quality and insights across channels and systems. This is while delivering context-specific tooling for practitioners to build, manage and optimise digital journeys on 'owned' channels and orchestrate third-party experiences.

A solution like Optimizely DXP makes:
  • creating behaviour-driven experiences simple
  • crafting sophisticated content faster
  • collaborating easier
  • anticipating customer needs possible
  • helping marketers eliminate guesswork easier, and
  • making every interaction actionable.

Evolving from content management systems (CMS) to DXP

Digital transformation is no longer a business strategy; it has become the main driver of any successful business. Digital experiences have transformed over the years and so too has the role of content and content systems. They have evolved from CMS to WEM and now to DXP.

This evolution has seen significant changes from single to omnichannel and from content-centric to customer-centric. As online strategies focus on customer-centric content, DXPs offer a seamless and consistent way to bridge digital touchpoints.

They provide the capability to reach customers on a one-on-one basis, increasing both conversions and revenue.

Choosing a DXP

Choosing a DXP can seem overwhelming for any company in the early stages of digital transformation. But first, one needs to define DXP. In the past, setting up any digital platform would involve all kinds of disconnected pieces. One would need to acquire different parts from different vendors and then somehow stitch the whole thing together.

DXP is a lot more sophisticated in terms of what it can do by delivering a consistent experience across all digital channels. This is not just in terms of websites and landing pages but also mobile devices, IoT devices like Alexa and even digital kiosks in stores.

Yet when it comes to getting up and running, DXP is a fully integrated and fast-to-implement platform. So, what does the roadmap look like from where you are now to harnessing the true value of a DXP?

The field of DXPs is still promising, but there are a number of features that are common to most DXPs:

Content management
Content is at the core of digital experiences, so most DXPs have some CMS capabilities. A DXP helps serve as a central repository for an organisation's content. That content can be presented across omnichannel touchpoints — whether that's on the website, blog, mobile app, social media post or event IOT device.

Asset management
A related functionality to content management is digital asset management. As with content (which is typically in text form), DXPs serve as the central repository for digital assets such as images, videos and audio files, which can then be used in different contexts. DXPs utilise cloud infrastructure to provide scalability to match the needs of the user.

Commerce
Commerce is at the heart of the business and DXPs enable companies to easily transact on the web by providing e-commerce functionality. Digital experience platforms handle all the backend work needed to set up a digital storefront, accept payments and track orders.

Customer relationship management (CRM)
Closely related to commerce is CRM capabilities. A DXP will keep track of customer data in order to build long term customer relationships, as well as create a personalised experience for every customer.

Insights, analytics and intelligence
It is not sufficient for a DXP to simply host content; modern DXPs also provide analytics and insight into user behaviour workflows.

Digital experience platforms can provide real-time insights into user behaviour and make proactive recommendations for optimising the experience through technologies such as big data analysis and content intelligence.

Personalisation and automation
Another related capability of DXPs is personalisation. Because the DXP is the central store of user data, DXPs have the capability to analyse behavioural data and first-party data to create personalised experiences for each user. Many of these personalised experiences can be automated, helping marketers scale their experiences.

Experimentation
The most advanced digital experience platforms incorporate digital experimentation functionality, which allows users to seamlessly run A / B tests on their content and experiences in order optimise experiences and reduce the risk of new changes, using statistical analysis to make data-driven decisions.

APIs and integrations
Of course, no single software platform can do it all — at least not yet.

The top DXPs provide flexible APIs and an open architecture so that they can easily be integrated with best-of-breed solutions for different pieces of the DXP technology stack. This is in order to build out the most complete digital experience platform that suits their needs.

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