Build a content experience that thinks like your user

The best DJs don’t just press “play” and hope for the best. Instead, they read the room, and adjust their sets in real time based on the reaction they’re getting from the crowd — so that the dance floor stays packed until the end of the night. 

Okay, it’s a different vibe, but the best digital marketers do the same thing with content. Rather than throwing the same content at every visitor to their website (or every user of their app), they tailor the experience, in real time, based on personal preferences and expectations, so that they stay engaged during every stage of their customer journey. 

That’s a long way of saying we need to be more focused on the content experience — and in this post, we’re going to do that. We’ll define the term as it relates to digital content marketing, and then discuss what it takes to create great digital experiences for your customers. 

Content experience defined

Content is more than the sum of its parts (text, images, sound files, etc.). It’s a journey with a beginning, middle, and an end. That journey can be identical for every consumer, with every visitor to a website seeing, hearing, or reading the exact same things — or it can be tailored specifically to individual users.

That’s not to say that the latter journey is made of random guesses. On the contrary, every single person gets a different experience (targeted product recommendations, suggested blogs, images, and so on) based on who they are as consumers. 

That’s another way of saying that content experience can be framed as “personal experience” in the sense that every user or customer should receive an experience optimized for their tastes and preferences — with the goal of increasing their engagement with the content and, ultimately, the likelihood that they’ll convert. 

Opportunity and risk

There’s a reason personal experiences are great for engagement: they’re memorable, unique, and typically leave customers feeling seen and valued. If you can extend that personalization across every stage of the customer journey, that unified experience can turn a mildly interested passerby into a loyal, repeat customer.

On the other hand, when personalization isn’t optimized, customers notice — and that generates friction, which (as you’ve probably guessed) negatively impacts engagement, and conversion rates and, eventually, the bottom line. 

That means brands must consider personalization at every stage of the content experience. When they don’t do that, they risk aggravating the following pain points:

• Discoverability: A product drop announced prematurely on social media can frustrate users that expect to purchase via the app or website. 

• Accessibility: A campaign video without captions is a barrier to non-native speakers and hearing-impaired users. 

• Context: Returning logged-in customers quickly grow tired of generic “new customer” messaging or constantly seeing the same content.

• Connection: Emails announcing sales need to link customers to pages that match the emailed details of promotion. 

• Consistency: Product information needs to match across banner ads, social media posts, apps, and webpages, or customers quickly get confused.

Why should you care about the unified content experience?

We’ve outlined some key pain points, but good content experiences aren’t just about connecting the stages of a customer journey in order to minimize friction as users read, view, or consume content. Great content that isn’t backed by a great experience won’t sustain loyalty or engagement in a target audience over the long term. 

By putting the infrastructure in place to deliver unified, personalized content experiences, you’re effectively anticipating customer needs and expectations wherever and however they engage — and thereby opening up peripheral benefits that wouldn’t otherwise have been available.

Engagement momentum

When a customer engages with a piece of content, a personalized content experience keeps them engaged. A fascinating blog, backed by a “Related content” link, for example, can propel a customer forward to conversions, purchases, and return visits. 

Trust and loyalty

The more consistent the content experience across channels (website, app, store display, wearable) the more robust the relationship brands can build with their customers. Positive expectations of content experiences drive trust and loyalty and ongoing engagement. 

Personalization at scale

When content experiences work for customers, brands can use the data and feedback to power personalization at scale. For example, a customers’ past purchases, location, language, or even browsing behavior are all data that can be used to tailor the content they see the next time they visit a brand’s online store — or extrapolated to other customers in the same segment or similar segments. 

ROI

Good content experiences help brands generate return on investment. Not only do customers typically convert at higher rates when they receive personalized experiences, but it becomes more cost effective for brands to focus on building that personal engagement in the first place. 

Building the foundations of the content experience

Great content experiences are built on solid foundations. Or, more specifically, built on digital experience platforms with the capabilities to shape content experiences, at scale, over the long term.

But what does that mean for brands that are developing their content strategy and thinking about how to put their content management tech stacks together?

1. Channel flexibility

A unified content experience, by definition, needs to extend across a brand’s channels and touchpoints. From full blogs and product descriptions to call-to-action buttons or even color schemes, brands should be able to drop content into any channel seamlessly.

That level of omnichannel flexibility requires content to be code-agnostic and modular so that it can be created once and then reused anywhere within a brand’s digital ecosystem. To do that, brands need to lean into the possibilities of composable content — implementing a headless content management system (CMS) capable of structuring every content asset that they upload. 

2. Unified vision

Great content experiences, and great personalization, can’t happen if data and insight is hidden from the teams that need it most. In other words, the components of your tech stack need to be open and accessible so that developers, writers, editors, and marketers can always find what they need and work together on the content experience.  

To eliminate the risk of siloing, and provide the kind of flexibility and data visibility that your teams will need, you’ll need to leverage the possibilities of headless architecture and, specifically, the interoperability of application programming interfaces (APIs). An API-first design approach ensures seamless communication between the different elements of your tech stack, which means that the critical data flowing between people, tools, and resources are always available. 

3. Personalization and context

Personalization is critical to creating content experiences that engage users — but it has to be good personalization. Using a customer’s first name, once, when they arrive on a site or open an app isn’t good enough. Good personalization is about delivering a unique experience every time users interact with content: personalized blog suggestions, product recommendations, deals, promotions, and so on. 

That means thinking about omnichannel orchestration. In other words, ensuring personalized content experiences at the right time, on the right device, in the right format. And it’s worth exploring the potential for AI-powered personalization, especially if you need to do so at scale. 

4. Measurement and iteration

Content experiences aren’t one-off tasks or boxes to be ticked, they’re living systems that evolve with customer behavior and market pressures, and help you climb search engine rankings.

To account for that, you need to be able to constantly check on the performance of your content via user testing, and iterate on content experiences by applying A/B testing, segmentation, and analytics tools.

The better integrated those tools are with your personalization solution, the faster you can deliver the data you need to adjust content and continually optimize experiences. 

How Contentful helps you create unified content experiences 

For many brands, the unified content experience challenge isn’t finding a personalization solution to integrate with their CMS, it’s understanding what parts of the experience to personalize for their customers. 

To do that, you need to first understand who your customers are and how they think — and then have the tools in place to personalize every part of their experience you create.

Contentful is built to make that process simple:

Structured content 

Contentful organizes content into reusable, modular building blocks. That means you can create content once and reuse it anywhere — from product descriptions to promo banners to CTA buttons. This structured content approach makes it easy to scale personalized experiences across every channel while closely controlling brand voice and messaging.

Seamless personalization

Contentful’s API-first architecture means that every part of your tech stack is interoperable, and can feed personalization data into every part of the content experience. Our dedicated solution, Contentful Personalization, allows web, digital and growth teams to harness that data from within the platform, and tailor content with the click of a button  — without any need for developer involvement.

Omnichannel content distribution

As customers move across websites, apps, wearables, store displays, and other touchpoints, Contentful ensures their experience goes with them. Our CMS provides a centralized, single source of truth for every digital channel and touchpoint to ensure accurate information and a seamless journey wherever customers connect.

For example, a buyer journey could see a user receive a promotion via your app, switch to desktop to browse further, and then go back to the app to pay without missing a step. 

Content governance

Great content experiences require developers, editors, and marketers to be able to work together cohesively during content production.

Contentful makes that happen with built-in workflows, roles, and permissions that can be controlled and set from within the CMS. That means your teams can collaborate on high-quality content without stepping on each other’s toes, while content governance guardrails ensure the right content reaches the right audience, in the relevant format at the right time.

AI-powered workflows

Contentful’s native AI Actions tool automates repetitive tasks like image tagging and metadata creation — meaning your content teams can be faster and more efficient as they create and shape content experiences. Contentful Personalization is also powered by AI and can automate the core elements of the personalization process with content suggestions, audience segment suggestions, no-code A/B testing, and more.   

Wrapping up

Don’t settle for superficial, one-size-fits-all content experiences. Just like a great DJ keeps their crowd moving through the night, you can shape personal experiences that hold your customers’ attention and keep them engaged on your virtual dance floor.

And the Contentful Platform makes that job easier by helping you to think like your customers in the moment — and then grow and change with them over the long term. 

Contentful has helped brands around the world develop a better understanding of their customers, and use that insight to shape content strategies and deliver outstanding content experiences. If you’re ready to learn more, why not get in touch with our sales team to discuss your next move?

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