Debunking 5 DXP myths holding back your digital transformation

This article will focus on digital experience platforms (DXPs), setting their myths and misconceptions right.

An effective DXP promotes good digital experiences, which result in as much as 60% more conversions. DXP myths need to be debunked so businesses can leverage this valuable system.

Let’s get started!

Key takeaways:

• A digital experience platform facilitates digital transformation by providing the tools a business needs to ensure users have positive experiences across all its digital channels.

• Keeping up with evolving technologies and customer needs is a tenet of DXPs, and they reflect that in their modular architecture.

• DXPs boost business functionality and productivity.

• An ROI of DXPs and transformative content is the low cost associated with scaling.

An intro to digital experience platforms and transformative content

Before delving into DXPs, let’s clarify what a digital experience and a digital customer experience are.

Here’s a scenario:

8:00 AM: Moira looks through her social media and sees a sweater on sale from iHeartSweaters, a business she follows.

NOON: Moira takes another glance at the product on iHeartSweaters’ website from her workstation.

5:00 PM: She pulls the trigger and buys the sweater from the iHeartSweaters app on her smartphone.

Each interaction Moira had with iHeartSweaters is called a digital experience, and the sum of the exchanges is called a digital customer experience. Businesses have been investing in digital experience platforms to enhance both. 

What is transformative content? 

The terms transformative content and digital transformation go hand in hand. Businesses must keep up with ever-evolving technology, their competition and customer expectations. Digital transformation is the company’s process to meet those challenges, and transformative content is the tangible result.

What is a digital experience platform?

A DXP is a software platform that facilitates digital transformation. The DXP contains the tools that businesses need to ensure users have a positive digital experience across all of the company’s digital channels.

Debunking the myths surrounding DXPs

Now that we got all the vocabulary down, let’s dig into some of the myths relating to digital experience platforms and transformative content.

Myth #1: It’s just a fad

DXP and transformative content are here to stay and will expand. Researchers project the DXP market to grow from USD $7.9 billion in 2019 to USD $13.9 billion by 2024.

How is DXP solidifying its foothold in business? There are at least three fundamental reasons:

• Customer retention – Businesses want to acquire new customers but need to keep their existing ones. DXPs assist companies by performing experiments and analyzing customer behavior to deliver personalized content and enhance the digital experience. 

• Advancing technology – Applications are becoming cloud-centric. It’s even possible to work on parts of applications without interrupting the flow of others or the overall service, and microservices are the current reality. What will the future of technology be? The DXP architecture is flexible so that it can adapt to growing technology needs.

• Central content management – There are many digital channels: websites, mobile apps and social media presence. The backend information should be consistent across all these touchpoints, and DXPs meet that need. The terminology to describe the solution is headless CMS.

Image Source: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/digital-experience-platform-market-234793101.html

Myth #2: It’s another term for content management system

We discussed that DXPs offer headless content management systems, but CMS isn’t the only component of digital experience platforms. DXPs tie in many solutions to create the overall customer experience. Other elements in DXPs include: 

• Ecommerce – The platform touches all the facets of merchandising. Examples include displaying products on a website or mobile app, social media engagement and emailing subscribers. Then, there is the checkout process. DXPs play a role in making the checkout a seamless and positive experience by providing performance tests and enhancing security.

• Artificial intelligence – Data collection is vital to businesses so they can satisfy customer expectations. AI and machine learning take data collection a step further and use the findings to anticipate customer needs and automatically tailor personalized experiences.

• Personalization – Along with data analytics and AI, experimentation plays a role in customizing the user experience. DXPs integrate A/B testing, multivariate testing and more to create that unique and engaging transformative content for the customer.

These are but a few components. Forrester Analyst Mark Grannan states that the DXP “is simply much broader [than CMS] because it’s embracing the notion that there is a holistic customer lifecycle that demands support in a different way than web content management traditionally did.”

Myth #3: Once set up, it’s challenging to make changes

DXPs are not rigid. The name “transformative content” implies that the structure is ever-changing. Keeping up with evolving technologies and customer needs is a tenet of DXPs, and they reflect that in their design.

The modular architecture of digital experience platforms allows for the support of its many components. Developers can work on and deploy changes to, say front-end-as-a-service, without interrupting the rest of the solutions in the platform. 

Myth #4: It doesn’t affect productivity

Customers aren’t the only beneficiaries of digital experience platforms. Companies improve their workflow in at least three ways:

• Communication – DXPs combine information from all departments, breaking down silos and promoting interdepartmental communication and collaboration. There is even multilingual support.

• Data access – Technical and customer support personnel have comprehensive customer data at their fingertips to provide knowledgeable assistance without the customer needing to repeat information.

• Customization – Teams can adjust settings, add features and remove unused ones to make interfaces more user-intuitive. 

Myth #5: The return on investment (ROI) isn’t worth it

We have already covered a few ROIs, namely customer loyalty and increased business productivity. Concerning customer loyalty, the following figure shows the correlation between positive experiences and customer retention.

Image Source: https://www.forrester.com/blogs/whats-the-roi-of-cx-transformation/

Another benefit of DXPs and transformative content is the low cost associated with scaling. Its flexible architecture means that administrators can upgrade or swap individual components without impacting the rest of the environment or the user experience.

Honorary mention myth: DXPs are hard to implement

Integrating a digital experience platform is seamless with the right support team, and Optimizely can guide your business through that journey. 

Our teams are experts in digital transformation projects. They can explain how Optimizely fits in with your current digital solutions or even open up some areas for consideration as you implement a digital experience platform.

Ready to unlock your digital potential? Contact us today!