Digital experience or digital transformation?

To understand why a Digital Experience Platform (DXP) is important, we first have to define what a digital experience is. A digital experience represents the interaction between people and businesses across digital technologies, which can come in many forms. This however does not simply mean taking a physical interaction and replicating it online. A true digital experience should stand for a new way of delivering added value to customers and differentiate companies in an overcrowded market. To be relevant, bespoke and omnichannel, digital experience is about hand-picking and implementing the right tools, technologies and content.

In these digital times, organizations stay competitive by creating and building relationships through communication. In other words, organizations use content to speak and data to listen.

When is the right time to adopt a DXP?

Now is the time to rethink your digital maturity. A content management system (CMS) might be the right tool for your company right now, but what about in the future? What you need to ask yourself is: Where will your business be in 2 years? Or 5 years? Because not all CMSs will give you a pathway to grow into a DXP. In addition, your DXP needs to be able to integrate fluidly with other systems to offer end-to-end content management.

Digital technologies have transformed the way people and organizations interact. They create both risk (disruption) and opportunity (customer-obsessed engagement) for businesses across industries and sizes. Digital experience platforms are continually adapting solutions to meet the constant evolution of our digital age.

What are the options?

DXPs are becoming increasingly complex and sophisticated. Customers are overwhelmed with options and want to quickly understand what makes one product or brand different from another. Knowing the right way to position yourself and your products can mean the difference between standing out and blending in.

Essentially, there is no one-size-fits-all DXP. Since every business is unique and there are thousands of options in the technology world today, you should always go for a best-of-breed solution. The goal is to have a platform that allows you to create, operate, maintain, govern, and grow your digital operations. Such a platform will never be the result of an "off-the-shelf" purchase based on a single all-in-one product from a single vendor.

Stacking the right technologies

The best-of-breed in any field are those that set the standard for others to follow. It’s important to evaluate the current options and find the one that will move your business forward. A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform will help you manage your relationship with existing customers and, at the same time, walk the leads through the marketing funnel. Adding a Customer Data Platform (CDP) on top of your CRM will help create a more well-rounded and informative customer profile.

Social listening tools will allow you to see what consumers are saying about your industry or your business, while sentiment analysis platforms can identify underlying “feelings” (negative, positive, etc.) in text-based conversations both on and off social media. Conversely, web or app analytics platforms can identify underperforming areas that need improvement.

The glue holding it all together

The future of world-class omnichannel digital experiences is based on modern DXP platforms built using the MACH methodology and covering three main capabilities:

• Content management
• Content personalization
• Delivery of content across channels

No matter how hard you try to avoid it, at the end of the day, content still remains the soul of the experience.

One of the first steps in creating a composable DXP and creating personalized omnichannel experiences is to adopt a headless CMS, which can lay the foundation for a robust digital experience platform. A CMS needs to be more than headless though, to be the right choice for you. You should be getting these out-of-the-box features:

• Reusable components
• Workflows
• Scheduling & Releases
• Image optimization
• Internationalization
• Backups
• Omnichannel publishing

Key takeaways

Choosing the right CMS for your current and future growth is now more important than ever. If you’re looking for a headless CMS that can be your path to the future and meets the requirements detailed above, please reach out to our Dedicated Partner Team to learn more about Storyblok.