Why invest in a digital experience platform for your e-commerce business

Businesses have changed their methods for interacting with their customers. This way, they can stay in the market competition, beat competitors, and cope with rising customer expectations. After all, organizations know that over 32% of the customers will give up the brand with just one bad experience! This is a key indicator as to why a digital experience platform is a necessary tool.

Surprisingly, customer experience has a more positive impact on the brand than advertising. Investments in a digital experience platform influence the Return on Investments (ROI). According to statistical data, 65% of U.S customers leave a positive experience in a brand with more potential to lift the brand sales than advertising.

When you shop online, you have your first shopping experience. It’s not just the first shopping experience. You might want to recommend something, report ads on social media, or send an email. All these are a lot of things to track and trace. It raises the question, how can a brand guarantee that they are offering the best possible digital experience at every touchpoint of the brand?

In past ages, the primary source of interaction between the e-commerce company and customers was a digital channel called a website. And for the delivery of the content, the e-commerce business relied on the traditional content management system (CMS).

If an e-commerce business wants to deliver a personalized customer experience, it should be looking forward to investing in digital experience platforms. This article is all you need to know about digital experience platforms and why you should invest in one.

What is a digital experience platform? 

A leading technology research company, Gartner, coined the term digital experience platform. So, what does a digital experience platform do? Well! A digital experience platform (DXP) is a platform that creates, delivers, and optimizes the connected digital experience across multiple interacting channels like websites, mobile applications, and voice assistants.

The importance of investing in a digital experience platform

Digital experience platforms perform many tasks like personalizing, delivering omni-channel experiences, and future-proof adaptability. You cannot afford to skip such crucial benefits if you want to make a modern e-commerce customer shopping experience.

• Personalization 

Personalization helps both a company and a customer in better understanding. According to a 2021 McKinsey report, 71% of the customers expect companies to provide personalized interactions. And it is crucial to do personalization accurately. Segment’s 2021 State of Personalization report discovered that finding and collecting accurate and real-time customer data is one of the biggest challenges 43% of organizations face.

Personalization uses artificial intelligence and machine learning system. Both technologies automatically gather information about customer behavior via all the digital channels. All these customer data help the digital experience platforms to perform optimization at every customer touchpoint. One example is when a website visitor frequently interacts with the makeup accessories section of the online beauty store. It helps the business owner automatically deliver the beauty accessories content to the visitor through automated newsletters or other social media platforms.

• Omni-channel experiences

Omni-channel experience is a digital experience approach that primarily focuses on the net quality of interaction between the customer and the brands. This type of experience is not a kind of a single-channel exchange.

Delivering an efficient omni-channel experience improves the customer retention rate to 90%. Omni-channel means the customer enjoys a seamless and smooth shopping experience regardless of how, where, and when. They love to interact with your brand.

This digital platform uses MACH architecture. It helps the owner to create once and distributes multiple times. It facilitates the owner in no time as it enables the user to deliver the same content simultaneously across all the digital channels, from chat boxes and websites to mobile apps and augmented reality platforms.

Examples of an omni-channel are brick-and-mortar stores, apps, or desktop-based options like online stores. Such as, a clothing brand might sell its clothes on its specific website, shopping tab of Instagram, Amazon store, and a brick-and-mortar store.

• Future-proof adaptability 

Adaptability is a vital part of any business. A digital experience platform is future-proof only if it is scalable and vulnerable to new technologies fast. Every year, companies spend over 20% of the total software development cost on only updates. If a business owner spent around $100,000 on software developments, it would require an owner to maintain a budget of $20,000 on updates annually. It is a massive amount of money, even for the developed e-commerce store or companies.

Due to the latest technologies and innovative digital methods, it is more intelligent to use APIs for adding new apps and functions to the existing digital experience platform rather than wasting thousand-dollar cheques on software updates.

Things to consider while choosing a digital experience platform

If, as a business owner, you are planning to invest in the digital experience platform, do read the following details.

• A comprehensive digital customer experience support 

It may sound complex. Still, it is the most crucial part and cannot be compromised. The DXP of the business should be well equipped throughout the customer journey stages to deliver a smooth and continuous omni-channel digital experience from the first and foremost point of interaction to the point where they become paying customers, even till the post-purchase experience.

A comprehensive customer journey support enables businesses to collect well-established data regarding the behavior of the customers. They interact with various digital channels across the buyer journey. It allows a business owner to deliver more personalized experiences. It is a single platform used to manage and maintain the entire digital experience of customers.

• Third-party integration

If one person intends to expand the capabilities of the digital experience platform, then what could be better than having a third-party integration. The third-party integration helps to increase the abilities of a DXP, enabling a person to execute more tasks simultaneously from a single source.

APIs are necessary for an efficient digital experience. They serve as a connection between an external system and applications. The APIs like translation services, enterprise resource planning software, and customer relationship management software are must-haves.

• Scalability 

An excellent DXP has a feature to detect and adapt to rapid changes throughout the user demands and customer workflow journey and should not negatively impact the overall performance. For example, whenever high traffic hits the online store, an outstanding DXP automatically scales up to deal with the spike in real-time.

Top three perks of digital experience platform solutions

DXP fulfills customer expectations with their favorite obsession, which might be a product or a service. Following are some top perks of having a DXP.

• Achieving a better business (ROI)

Digital experience platforms help a company to meet the user experience. It also helps a company to interact with the customer regularly. A DXP develops an understanding between the two and builds a strong bond and loyal relationship.

• Collecting customer data 

There is no better choice for an e-commerce business if it wants to tack, trace, and analyze every possible digital touchpoint. It enables the company to collect almost all data from the customer’s experiences so that the company can understand how a customer interacts with their brand?. What do they like about the brand? What features or products do they want the company to improve?

• Maximizing the digital marketing investment

DXPs have an inbuilt digital experience management system in their content, making customization for various digital marketing initiatives as easy as a piece of cake across any industry.

A single DXP manages company SEO and content, building and designing an automated customer journey based on prior experiences and behavior. Moreover, it helps create an omni-channel strategy for delivering multiple cross-channel promotions.

Switch to a digital experience platform – or not?

If you are confused about whether you need a content management system or not, is it the right thing to do for the business? Well! You should ask these three questions yourself to help you guide the way.

1. Are you targeting a great audience that is national and international clients with numerous demographics?
2. Does your business exist at more than one digital touchpoint?
3. Does your online business architecture include a headless CMS?

And if the answer to any of the above-asked questions is YES, then a digital experience platform is all you need.

Final words

Within a decade, the digital landscape has changed a lot. Now things have become more advanced. The customer interacts with your online store in multiple ways, different messaging apps, IoT devices, social media platforms, and in-store kiosks. Even though the mean has changed, still people expect to experience the same. An e-commerce business needs a smooth, seamless system, allowing them to stay connected to all the digital channels to know the customer experience.

Therefore, organizations need to invest in digital experience platforms. It will not only improve the customer experience, but you’ll see a significant increase in your sales. So, it’s a win-win situation for brands.