What’s a digital experience platform?

What is a digital experience platform (DXP)? We recently asked marketers at some very successful companies this question. And guess what? None of them could really explain what a DXP is. 

That’s not entirely surprising because there are so many components to any digital experience that it’s nearly impossible to pinpoint exactly where the experience begins and ends, let alone define the integrated technologies you need to craft it. 

In this post, we’ll cover the capabilities you need to provide the digital experiences people want, regardless of what solution you use. But before we get into the what, we first need to answer why. 

Why are companies choosing digital experience platforms?

The term digital experience platform was created to define an increasingly complex problem: meeting customer expectations in an increasingly competitive digital world. 

Customers now expect seamless experiences; three-quarters of consumers (73%) are omnichannel shoppers, and 90% expect a consistent brand experience regardless of channel or device, according to statistics from CapitalOne Shopping. 

And, AI is changing the digital landscape, enabling brands to rapidly produce more content. As the number of digital experiences explodes, getting new customers to engage with your brand even once is increasingly challenging. 

Teams are struggling with an overwhelming amount of content

Brands must deliver connected customer experiences that attract new customers and continue to engage them throughout the customer journey. To do that, they need content that is deeply relevant to each customer and personalized based on their unique interests. This means creating, managing, and orchestrating multiple content variants across channels and times. Once you add in localizing, translating, and adapting that content for different markets or across multiple brands, content creation needs spike exponentially. 

Creating and managing an endless stream of content to fuel dynamic, personalized experiences is overwhelming teams and the tools they traditionally relied on.

Digital experience platforms to the rescue 

Digital experience platforms evolved to make working with this enormous amount of content manageable. How well they solve that problem depends on each platform’s capabilities. All-in-one digital experience platform suites — single tools that try to do everything necessary to produce digital experiences — share the limitations of monolithic content management systems. Companies are already pivoting to the next generation of digital experience tools: the composable digital experience platform.

What is a digital experience platform? 

Most analysts and companies define a digital experience platform as a set of technologies that lets you create, manage, and deliver customer experiences across channels. That definition leaves us wondering what specific set of technologies and capabilities brands need.

When we dig deeper, we see a lack of alignment around the components a digital experience platform should include. This lack of alignment means that getting a digital experience platform doesn't guarantee any specific capabilities. 

What capabilities should a digital experience platform include?

To deliver digital experiences efficiently and at scale, we believe you need a platform that integrates:

• Robust content management capabilities: Content management systems that maximize flexibility and speed through composable architecture, structured content, and smart governance features empower editors to assemble engaging digital experiences faster.

• Cross-channel delivery: The ability to connect and orchestrate messaging across communication channels enables you to deliver more consistent, engaging customer experiences.

• Personalization and experimentation at scale: Continuous experimentation enables you to refine personalization strategies and deliver relevant, targeted experiences that increase customer satisfaction.

• Analytics and reporting:  Analytics and reporting features that pull data from multiple sources, making it easier to measure the success of cross-channel digital strategies and to understand how channels work together. 

• Experience assembly: A digital experience platform with features like streamlined operations, reusable components, and AI integrations will help teams assemble and deliver cohesive customer experiences faster. 

• ​​Integration capabilities: API-first, composable architecture enables you to connect seamlessly with all the other tools you use, such as digital asset management (DAM), product information management (PIM), ecommerce systems, and marketing automation applications.

Do you need a digital experience platform?

To deliver the rich, engaging experiences customers want, you need an integrated technology stack that lets you create, manage, deliver, and optimize personalized experiences across channels and digital touchpoints.

Whether that’s packaged as a digital experience platform or a CMS that connects the tools you need and supports collaboration across multiple teams is less important than the capabilities you get. 

You might already have many of the capabilities a digital experience platform offers, but they’re probably scattered across systems. This lack of integration makes producing consistent experiences across multiple channels harder.  Marketing teams struggle to go from superficial personalization to data-driven experiences. They might deliver some amazing digital experiences, but they keep missing opportunities because the process is too slow and clunky to scale. Messaging ends up feeling redundant and disconnected.

If these challenges sound familiar, then your platform is failing you. You and your teams deserve better.

Composable solutions offer brands better options 

Until recently, companies had a tough choice — invest in a monolithic DXP or CMS with full functionality they didn’t necessarily use, or continue to struggle with multiple tools that don’t easily integrate. 

Today, API-first, composable solutions, like Contentful, offer brands a better option. Composable solutions are modular — they let you easily integrate the tools you need to deliver the digital experiences customers want. Digital experience platforms built on a composable architecture connect everything to streamline operations and give teams the flexibility to bring their creative visions to life faster and at scale. 

How brands use Contentful to deliver digital experiences

Contentful has been composable from the start and continues to evolve so you can meet customer demands for bigger, better, more cohesive digital experiences. We offer visual assembly and personalization tools for marketers, a language-agnostic back end that developers love, and AI features that help brands build tailored customer experiences at scale. The results speak for themselves.

• KFC unified content to maintain brand consistency while improving the customer experience across multiple markets, resulting in a 43% increase in digital sales.

• Ruggable empowered editors to mix and match content, streamlining operations so editors can spend more time on localization and personalization, leading to 7x higher click-through rates.

• Pets Deli used customer data to deliver personalized experiences on Black Friday, increasing conversions by 51%.

• Kraft Heinz streamlined content creation, fueling personal connections across brands and driving a 30% increase in engagement.

• Heap integrates content with customer data from their analytics tool to deliver data-informed digital experiences.

• BMW redesigned over 100 websites in a few months to support the content needs of 147 dealerships.

Contentful supports 4,200 organizations worldwide. See more success stories.

Find a solution that gives you the exact functionality you need 

Just because a solution fits the technical definition of being a digital experience platform doesn’t mean it will provide you or your teams with the capabilities you need. Do yourself a favor and look under the hood. Kick the tires and ask for demos.

Look for a platform that includes:

• A mature CMS that supports content velocity: Modular, reusable content, good governance, and efficient workflows let you deliver experiences faster.

• Intuitive interfaces for developers and marketers: Great digital customer experiences take creativity and engineering. Your platform should support both.

• Solutions and features that have depth: You need more than superficial capabilities. Think intelligent AI features, data-driven personalization, and advanced experimentation.

• Modern API-first, composable architecture: Legacy platforms often use older architecture that is slower, harder to integrate, and more expensive to scale. 

• A large tech ecosystem with easy integrations: A bigger ecosystem equals more flexibility, so your platform isn’t holding you back from the latest technology.

• Fully integrated AI features: AI is transforming how brands deliver digital experiences. Will the platform help you harness that potential to increase marketing automation and efficiency?

• Proven success at enterprise scale: Ask for numbers and case studies that show how the platform handles high volume, traffic spikes, and multichannel launches.

At Contentful, we’ve been challenging the status quo (and delighting our customers) for years, first by freeing teams to publish content anywhere with headless CMS, and now by changing how brands deliver digital experiences. Keep an eye on this space. We can’t wait to show you what’s coming next.

Are you eager to start delivering better, more personalized digital experiences at scale? Let’s chat.

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