Changing attitudes among consumers are forcing brands to re-evaluate their digital experiences. For Diane Murray of Progress, novel digital experience platforms could be the answer…
It’s no longer enough for a brand to make just a good first impression – brand reputation depends entirely on customers’ consistent and impactful digital experiences and the intelligence, efficiency and personalisation of their browsing and buying experiences. Digital experience can mean many things, but one thing is clear – its direct correlation to customer loyalty and retail success cannot be underestimated. According to Deloitte, customers who have a positive experience are 140% more likely to spend than those who have a poor experience.
Many business leaders appear to lack confidence in their customer experience and may be scrambling to stay competitive. According to a Harvard Business Review Analytic Services Report, while 92% of global business leaders view effective customer engagement as “very” to “extremely” critical to their organisation’s success, only 9% say they have excellent engagement today. The key challenge that prevents nearly half (44%) of businesses surveyed from fully realising successful customer engagement is a lack of collaboration, with siloed efforts the main reasons for this. The one key tool that can create, personalise and manage digital experiences throughout the customer lifecycle is a Digital Experience Platform (DXP).
Rising Customer Expectations
More progressive brands embraced innovative ways, using data analytics and digital technologies, to keep close to customers during the challenges of the pandemic. This accelerated the consumer desire for convenience and store-to-door delivery, anywhere in the world and in shorter and shorter timeframes. Online customers expect websites to load within three seconds according to Harvard Business Review. Consumers are also increasingly keen for retailers’ values to chime with their own in areas such as sustainability, diversity and inclusion.
A Consistent Experience Across All Channels
The DXP is a platform which acts as a hub for all digital experience, maintaining a seamless consistent digital experience across customer channels with journey mapping and a 360-degree view of the customer. It offers connected customer experiences while gathering actionable customer insights and can combine and coordinate applications, including content management, search and navigation, personalisation, integration and aggregation, collaboration, workflow, analytics, mobile and multichannel support.
With omnichannel strategies a priority for most businesses, a single view of the customer, shared across devices, touchpoints and between business functions – from marketing to fulfilment – is critical.
92% of global business leaders view effective customer engagement as “very” to “extremely” critical to their organisation’s success, only 9% say they have excellent engagement today.
Key DXP Features to Consider
A DXP’s features can provide clear advantages, such as flexibility, agility, and security. But with many features to consider and DXPs to choose between, it’s important for organisations to find the right one for their specific business in its specific industry. These trending features are driving the future of digital experiences:
- Composable DXP – A composable DXP allows teams to build a DXP with capabilities which best suit the business as it grows, such as Digital Asset Management, Social Media Connectivity, Digital Commerce, Multiexperience Support, Applied Artificial Intelligence, Collaboration & Knowledge Sharing, Chat with AI/ML Features, and Customer Data Management.
- Cloud Capabilities – The cloud deployment of your DXP can offer operational efficiency, autoscaling, near elimination of downtime risk and insight into the CI/CD processes streamline and optimise the management of your environment. MACH principles (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless), are getting lots of attention these days, and can only be applied in a cloud environment.
- Content Management – A more sophisticated DXP will focus on composability of components so the content component of a DXP will be different from a stand-alone CMS, assigning those overlapping capabilities to other modular components such as digital asset management.
- Personalisation – Businesses can’t afford to overlook personalisation – the strategies to be planned and executed before becoming efficient in personalising customer experience on a large scale can take months or years.
- Analytics/insights – AI can accelerate testing and help assess content performance. Actionable analytics provide the ability to assess and continually improve performance through testing along with business intelligence integration.
- Integration, Interoperability & Extensibility – The DXP should connect existing business systems and new modular components. Ensure there is an API layer to facilitate integration, interoperability, and extensibility.
- Front-End Technologies – The latest front-end development technologies such as .NET Core offer cross-platform development and rapid deployment. Low-code and no-code connectivity options offer ease of use for all professionals using the platform and a strong developer community will enable beneficial innovation tools.
- SEO, Site Search and Navigation – A DXP that has search engine optimisation (SEO) tools is vital as it enables an organisation to be seen and climb up the search rankings. Customers will abandon the site if it is difficult to navigate. Search indexes allow you to define different sets of content to be searched by the visitors on your website.
- Customer Journey Mapping and security – It’s vital to be able to orchestrate and evaluate the success of the customer experience comprehensively and seamlessly. DXPs must also be able to manage customer profiles securely for activity behind a secure and authenticated login.
Choosing the DXP That’s Right for Your Business
The DXP is fast becoming a must-have tool for successful transformation business leaders must realise the value of investing in the right technology to drive customer loyalty and impact the bottom line.
Irrespective of industry, size or type of business, it’s recommended not to overlook ease-of-use, cloud deployment and integrated chatbot capabilities, which are key features for any DXP. The ideal DXP will allow you to build what you need, deploy where and how you want, empower your customers, then manage it all safely and securely. Most importantly, a scalable DXP is critical to ensuring its capabilities can grow with your business.
ABOUT OUR GUEST WRITER
Diane Murray
Strategy Lead DXP EMEA at Progress
Diane Murray is a Strategy Lead for Sitefinity DX in EMEA at Progress. She has worked in the enterprise software industry for over 25 years with extensive experience in Customer Relations and Enterprise Partner Relationships. Diane has successfully driven growth through partner led go-to-markets and is now managing and executing on the Partner First, Strategic Plan for Digital Experience Platform for Progress in the UK, Meta, Nordics, Iberia, Italy and CEE.
