Digital Experience Platforms: How Compelling Is Your Online Presence?
An organization’s website is its front door to the world. Consumers and constituents judge organizations based on their ability to provide a modern web experience that is clean and intuitive and allows them to find information and services quickly. In commercial businesses, a deprecated website is off-putting to prospects and can decrease conversion rates. In the public sector, a poor web experience can lead to frustration from constituents, and subsequently, their elected officials.
Today’s consumers expect an increasing breadth of capabilities on a modern website, from customer portals for self-service to chatbots that steer them to the right resources quickly and effectively. Providing a consistent and compelling web experience is a strategic priority for marketers in every organization.
A keystone application for powering next-generation web experiences is the digital experience platform (or DXP). A modern DXP allows organizations to build and deploy content to multiple endpoints (traditional websites, responsive design, or even dedicated mobile applications). These platforms also provide robust capabilities for dynamic content optimization, multivariate testing, and web analytics.
The lines between DXP and other application categories are blurring. While many DXP vendors began life as web content management solutions, they’re now expanding their scope into adjacent areas for sales, marketing, and service enablement. For example, DXP vendors like Sitecore and Episerver now have proprietary e-commerce solutions. In contrast, other DXPs have broadened their functionality to incorporate social media listening or marketing automation as part of their offering.
Source: SoftwareReviews DXP Data Quadrant, March 2021
For years, DXP has been a fluid (and somewhat ill-defined) category. In framing the DXP category on SoftwareReviews, we set the boundaries around solutions that emphasized the ability to support next-generation web journeys. Many DXP providers are now embracing the notion of “headless content management” – leveraging the platform as a channel-agnostic mechanism to deliver content for the web alongside custom portals or mobile applications.
The importance of integration with other repositories of customer information (particularly CRM platforms) has also risen sharply in the last two years. After all, delivering personalized web experiences relies on what we know about the customer and their behavioral signals and preferences.
As organizations look to modernize their web presence, particularly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on digital channel adoption, they will need to draft strong functional requirements to select the best-fit vendor. Using our comprehensive set of resources and vendor evaluations, you can navigate the complex DXP solutions landscape and select a solution that will meet all of your needs.